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1 2 3 ‘Those People Were Some Kind of 4 5 Solution’: Can Society in any Sense 1 6 Be Understood? 7 8 9 Edward Shapiro* and Wesley Carr 10 1 2 3 4 Abstract 5 6 7 8 In a rapidly changing world, with boundaries of statehood, citizenship, influ- ence and authority difficult to discern, attempting to interpret society is a nec- 9 essary but uncertain enterprise. Using our diverse experience as heads of 201 contemporary institutions, we explore the limitations of social interpretation, 1 suggesting that those who are trying to make sense of society use their orga- 2 nizational and group memberships as organizing contexts while they listen to 3 and negotiate the differing interpretations of others. Amid the pressure of con- 4 flicting roles and interpersonal projection, providing structured spaces that are 5 free from interpretation may be crucial for individuals to locate themselves 6 and claim their unique perspectives. Those who interpret society should be 7 ready to notice their limitations. 8 9 In his poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, the Greek poet Constantine 30 Gavafy describes the people in a city waiting for the barbarians to 1 come and take over. But the barbarians do not come, and the people 2 return and indicate that there are no barbarians. The poem ends with 3 one of the disappointed citizens saying what a tragedy this is, because 4 ‘Those people were some kind of solution.’ 5 Considering outsiders as ‘barbarians’ has always been an easy 6 escape from grappling with the complexity of social process (Shapiro, 7 2003). Having an external barbarian suggests that death will come 8 from outside the culture, from outside the self. The notion suggests an 9 40 1 2 *Address: E. R. Shapiro, PO Box 962, Stockbridge, MA 01262, USA. E-mail: 311 [email protected] OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 242

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1 unconscious basic assumption fight-pair, where the shared fantasy is 2 that extinction of one will result in salvation for the other. The illusion 3 is that immortality – or unhindered progress – will result from des- 4 troying the barbarians. This fantasy deprives a culture of the deepen- 5 ing perspective derived from grappling with internal limitations. 6 Our topic – the interpretation of society – has become increasingly 7 prominent in the group relations world, possibly because of a new- 8 found maturity in the development of our thinking, or perhaps as a 9 reaction to the general incompetence and problems in delegation that 10 appear to dominate governments worldwide. 1 Making sense of the vast complexity of society is a daunting 2 prospect. None the less, the task of locating ourselves in the larger 3 world and negotiating shared views with others requires the effort. 4 Many are engaged in this task, in particular some within the Tavistock 5 tradition of group relations. We too – like Bion and others – have 6 argued that it is possible to extrapolate from the individual to the 7 group and from the group to society (Shapiro and Carr, 1991). But it 8 is worth questioning whether there is a limit of intellectual activity 9 beyond which speculation becomes so ungrounded, so filled with pro- 201 jection without reality testing, that it can be both stimulating and non- 1 sense. 2 Moving into large scale social interpretation has significantly 3 stretched group relations theory, which has generally been applied to 4 institutions and organizations through consultation (Khaleelee and 5 Miller, 1985; Carr, 1993). Today, we will consider whether it is possi- 6 ble to carry this kind of thinking to the mega institutions of human life, 7 nations and governments, where responsibility belongs to citizens and 8 their variously authorized leaders. And, if the beginnings of social 9 interpretation are possible, what are its conditions and constraints? 30 In the ancient world, a familiar rhetorical beginning for an argument 1 was to capture the listener’s ear with a story before going on to criti- 2 cize him. Here is ours. It’s by a nine-year-old boy who was asked to 3 write a piece on ‘flying’. 4 5 I was at the cemetery looking at my dad’s tombstone when my father rose 6 up from his grave. He touched me on the forehead and with that my shoul- 7 der blades started to grow. I began to sprout wings! I was so transfixed that I fainted. When I woke up my father was carrying me up to the sky. I was 8 so frightened that I might fall and die or he might drop me . . . ahhhhhhhh. 9 He did – I’m falling. Why has my father betrayed me! Wait a second, I’m 40 not falling, I am flying! My father shouts to me, ‘I gave you my gift and now 1 I must go.’ I yelled back, ‘Wait!’ But, it was too late. He had returned to his 2 grave, never to awaken again. I felt so sad that he couldn’t stay with me but 311 I also knew that he had given me a wonderful gift. I was soaring above the OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 243

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1 treetops like a colossal, proud eagle. The wind was blowing against my face 2 like it does when I ride my bike really fast. As I flew through a cloud, the 3 raindrops seemed like bugs hitting the car windshield. I wiped my face off 4 and did the back flip I’ve been practicing so hard in the swimming pool. 5 That was so much easier to do in the air! I started to get hungry and I really didn’t want to eat bird food so I 6 headed back to land. When I touched the ground my wings disappeared! I 7 soon discovered that that if I wanted to fly all I had to do was whisper 8 ‘Dad’, and my wings would magically appear. 9 10 You may have guessed that the author of this story was Joshua 1 Shapiro, my nine-year-old son, who was given the assignment in 2 school. Moved by the story and feeling proud of his work, I reacted 3 with warmth and praise. But, knowing that children need an interpre- 4 tation-free space to develop their own ideas, I did not tell him what I 5 made of his story. I thought to myself, ‘Josh is a young boy with an 6 older father. He is aware of his grandparents’ recent deaths and the 7 ravaging illness of my elder brother. He is reflecting on what he will 8 be left with after I die.’ My wife had a different interpretation, through 9 both her professional role as a psychologist and her role of mother. She 201 thought, ‘Josh is writing about his use of his father to separate from 1 his mother (earth), and thinking about what he has taken in from his 2 dad that will allow him to fly on his own.’ Founded in the marital and 3 parental roles, these interpretations are complementary; each offers 4 the other a reflection of their shared connection to their child. 5 I then sent the story to Wesley Carr, who wrote to Josh, telling him 6 that he had used the story in a sermon at . 7 Wesley’s interpretation came as a theologian. Writing to me, he said, 8 ‘Joshua’s questions resonate with some of the dilemmas of the 9 Christian tradition. If Christ rose from the dead at the resurrection, 30 where does he go then? St John says that Christ returns to the Father. 1 What interests me is how Josh begins at the tomb, revels in the free- 2 dom of expression by flying, but then finds that any serious taking-off 3 in life is only possible as long as he remembers the magic and sym- 4 bolic word, ‘Dad’. Josh recognizes that his father is a separate person 5 and can die. But he also sees that his father can both be gone forever 6 and invoked through his symbolic word. Any faith has to deal with 7 the presence and absence of God at the same time. The capacity to 8 locate the dead person in the mind is essential in handling bereave- 9 ment; the loved one must be discovered as both present and absent. 40 The strength of Josh’s paper was that he understood the power of the 1 internalized dead father.’ 2 Here is one small text, with three widely divergent interpretations, 311 each of which reflects the differing contexts each of us carries. The OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 244

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1 interpreters share something in common; all three are embedded in a 2 larger social structure. Our themes included: anxiety about loss, the 3 use of ‘the father’ in managing separation, and the complexity and 4 recognition of limits necessary for living and believing. These themes 5 are at the same time divergent, linked, interesting, and insufficient. 6 As individuals, we join society and separate from it, feel its com- 7 plexity and use our more familiar contexts to relate to it. But society is 8 too vast to be used simply. Unlike psychology or theology, society is 9 not a group or field that can be grasped. Each interpreter must begin 10 with a more definable access point, and consider the complexity of his 1 unique perspective in order to negotiate any shared interpretation 2 with others that allows for recognition of the limits of interpretation 3 and the missing pieces. 4 One of the more graspable contexts for an individual’s interpreta- 5 tion of society is group membership. Each of us takes up membership 6 in a number of groups. Their ideals and values permeate our thinking 7 (Shapiro, 2005). Our commitment to group membership is both a 8 behavioural interpretation of an aspect of society and an enactment of 9 our relatedness to it.2 The relationship is reciprocal; groups shape our 201 understanding of society. Our various groups are significant contexts 1 – often unconscious and covert – that form our interpretations of the 2 world. 3 4 HISTORY OF TAVISTOCK INTERPRETIVE WORK 5 6 The two of us take up membership in psychoanalytic and group rela- 7 tions traditions, both of which affect our perceptions. Members of 8 these traditions use notions of unconscious communication, delega- 9 tion, irrational role assignment, and the ways these aspects of uncon- 30 scious life are communicated through organizational task and the 1 structures of authority relations. 2 Some of these ideas date back to Sigmund Freud who, at the end of 3 his life, was so distressed by the way things were developing in 4 Europe that he began to try to explain the origins of human society. 5 Freud focused (1913, 1921, 1923, 1929) on the way the mind is shaped 6 by generational trauma, suggesting, for instance, that traumatic social 7 change in pre-historical society had left traces in the human uncon- 8 scious, affecting group membership. He hypothesized the pre-histori- 9 cal band of brothers who internalized their guilt over their joint 40 murder of the tribal father, suggesting that this was a central uncon- 1 scious basis for the subsequent rules of society and the beginnings of 2 civilization. Freud, too, considered the power of the internalized dead 311 father. OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 245

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1 The unfolding learning from psychoanalysis has illuminated some 2 of the ways we maintain unconscious connection with each other and 3 our past (both individual and collective) at all times. Freud and his fol- 4 lowers illuminated how learning about these connections can be deep- 5 ened through a particular role relationship and a negotiated task of 6 understanding. ‘Learning from experience’ became a central link from 7 psychoanalysis to group relations work, with ‘experience’ deliberately 8 defined as including the life of the unconscious, both individual and 9 collective. Making use of these insights led group-relations consultants 10 to use the structure of their roles to study organizational dynamics. 1 Through their authorized roles, consultants could reasonably assume 2 that organizational representatives were trying – both consciously and 3 unconsciously – to communicate so that the relevant issues could be 4 grasped. This assumption allowed consultants to take up an interpre- 5 tive stance, relying on their internal reactions to the process as data. 6 Since the Second World War, the Tavistock and associated organi- 7 sations have developed group relations conferences and theory, with 8 a high point reached in the 1960s. The intention that the study of 9 groups should lead to political and social change had always been pre- 201 sent in this work. Eric Trist (1985) noted, for instance, that while Bion 1 was writing Experiences in Groups, 2 3 it became apparent that [he] was using the word ‘group’ to mean inter- 4 changeably the face-to-face group and the wider society. For him there was 5 one ‘socio-’ and all ‘socio-’ had a ‘psycho-’dimension and all ‘psycho-’ a 6 ‘socio-’dimension. (p. 33) 7 8 In group relations conferences, the large group often becomes the 9 place where differences between members can be seen as differences 30 between nations and nationalities. Staff discussions, focusing on indi- 1 vidual members as representatives of whole cultures, often take place 2 against a media background, which demands larger scale thinking if 3 staff members are to locate their work in a larger context. But these for- 4 mulations have limits, and conference staff do not often examine 5 themselves and their external roles as relevant contexts for their per- 6 spectives. When these organizational roles become visible, we can see 7 more clearly their powerful influence on our efforts to make sense of 8 the larger world. 9 40 INTERPRETING FROM INSTITUTIONS 1 2 The two of us have had limited but fascinating opportunities to grasp 311 elements of the larger society from our organizational roles. We have OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 246

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1 learned about the powerful containment of the organizational context, 2 and the clarifying lens opened on to the larger society by the organi- 3 zational task. Given our experience, we wonder about the capacity of 4 any of us to work interpretively without attending to these contexts 5 and negotiating a shared meaning from a range of vantage points. 6 Our institutional tasks, roles, and focus intersect in complementary 7 ways. As psychoanalyst and director of a psychoanalytic hospital, 8 Shapiro attends to the individual and his or her relations to the family 9 and the community. As , Carr focuses on the 10 larger institutions of society and their use to others. Each of us uses an 1 interpretive stance as a way of life; it informs our work. In addition to 2 interpretive work within our institutions, each of us must make some 3 assessment of the relevant boundaries in the larger world in order to 4 help position our institutions within them. How do our institutions 5 and their primary tasks relate to the larger society? How are we 6 engaged with the outside? And, when we negotiate complex inter- 7 pretations with others in other institutions, what learning does the 8 outside world give back? 9 201 The Austen Riggs Center 1 2 The mission of the Austen Riggs Center is the treatment and study of 3 the individual in context in order to help ‘treatment resistant patients’ 4 become people taking charge of their lives. We treat patients who have 5 not benefited from the more medical, cognitive, and behavioral short- 6 term interventions that characterize contemporary psychiatric prac- 7 tice. Austen Riggs patients are those who have, as an aspect of their 8 psychopathology, what psychiatrists call ‘personality disorder’. In 9 essence, this refers to the problematic ways they are as people – devel- 30 oped in interaction with their human environments. These are people 1 who bother others, either through their self-destructive behaviours or 2 through their manifestations of anger or depression. We are learning 3 that these ‘bothering’ behaviours are unconscious communications 4 that require an appropriate setting to decode. Our patients are dele- 5 gates of their families, carrying information about their generational 6 past. Staff and patients have developed a setting for such translation 7 at the Austen Riggs Center over the past eighty-five years, and are 8 now seeing the ways in which generational trauma is transmitted non- 9 verbally through family and social interaction and encoded into per- 40 sonality. Our ongoing effort is to help translate disturbing actions into 1 language so that our patients can be better understood, recognize their 2 impact on others, and place their painful life experiences – both cur- 311 rent and past – in historical and sometimes generational perspective. OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 247

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1 Our therapeutic community of examined living requires us all to 2 attempt to translate behaviour and interaction into language – within 3 the staff group, the patient group, and between the two groups. Shift- 4 ing from ‘treatment-resistant patients’ to ‘people taking charge of their 5 lives’ requires all of us, to the extent possible, to take responsibility for 6 our own projections, stay in role, yet be available to others as we 7 attempt to make sense of our collective institutional life. What keeps 8 us relatively secure in the midst of this intensive interpretive effort is 9 a shared tradition and a series of protected ‘interpretation-free zones’, 10 where there is an agreed-upon break from scrutiny and an opportu- 1 nity to just be together. This space for freedom from interpretation is cru- 2 cial in allowing life to proceed without relentless – and often intrusive 3 – scrutiny of oneself and others. 4 We all bother one another in various ways. As Sartre (1948) noted, 5 ‘Hell is other people’. We learn to protect ourselves from being both- 6 ered by developing ways of not attending, not listening, not reacting. 7 These defences are also manifestations of how our personalities have 8 been shaped by our human environments, and they, too, are commu- 9 nications that require an appropriate environment to be decoded. We 201 have learned to take this seriously by attempting to take up an inter- 1 pretive stance as a whole community: listening to how the other is 2 right, filtering our experience through the framework of our roles, and 3 negotiating a shared reality that begins to make sense. In this context, 4 the communicative aspect of behaviour becomes visible, and both 5 patients and staff can begin to place their developmental experience in 6 perspective, seeing their own responsibility for repeated behavioural 7 enactments. 8 We have also found that our organization is a significant place to 9 stand as we begin to make sense of aspects of the larger society. It 30 gives us a lens, a tradition, and mission-related authority, so that we 1 can work with others in related organizations to negotiate a shared 2 view of the relevant aspects of the larger society. This respectful nego- 3 tiation protects any one of us from claiming certainty about our per- 4 ceptions of the outside world. 5 The approach distinguishes the Austen Riggs Center from the 6 majority of other psychiatric hospitals; our relative uniqueness 7 requires an effort on our part to discover those aspects of the larger 8 world that link to our work. To discern this, we increasingly focus our 9 mission so that others can recognize us. With this focus, we can 40 explore the perceptions of Riggs coming from others and begin to 1 invite people from other disciplines to talk with us about the interface 2 between our work and theirs. We increasingly see and engage the 311 outside world through the lens of our mission: the psychodynamic OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 248

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1 treatment and study of the individual in context. This has led us to 2 develop the Riggs’ Erikson Institute for Education and Research as a 3 structure for reaching outside and a way to hold our mission’s appli- 4 cation beyond our walls. While this is not an institution aimed at 5 understanding society – its task is treatment – we can use our primary 6 task to have a perspective on the outer world. 7 Let me give you an example. We organize our work at Riggs around 8 a community of examined living and give educational conferences for 9 clinicians on that theme. Out of one of these conferences came a 10 request from a local college to host a meeting of college counselling 1 centres. They were noticing that a large proportion of their entering 2 students were taking psychoactive medication, insisting that the coun- 3 selling centres continue providing it. Moreover, students were 4 requesting these medications for normal developmental experiences: 5 failed love relations, examination anxiety, and the like. Counselling 6 centre staff members sensed that the students’ turn to medication 7 and drugs was adversely affecting their colleges’ mission of learning, 8 by substituting managing life for learning from it. Riggs seemed to them 9 like an appropriate place outside of the counselling centre world to 201 take up ‘convening authority’ – and a focused identity – to bring the 1 colleges together. They recognized Riggs’ expertise about psycho- 2 active medication and the way the excessive use of medication can 3 affect learning about life. 4 In response to our invitation, a dozen colleges and universities sent 5 representatives. We designed a retreat, enlisted counselling staff in 6 presenting their experiences, and consulted to them from our position 7 as members of a ‘community of examined living’. Gradually, through 8 four annual meetings, counselling centre staff began to realize that 9 they were taking up a particular kind of work on behalf of the larger 30 educational system. Some had previously imagined that they had been 1 doing a kind of private practice, disconnected from the larger institu- 2 tion, until they began to see more clearly in our discussions that the 3 private practice mind-set was a defensive structure. This allowed them 4 to begin to discern the pressures coming at them from both the uni- 5 versity and the larger society that were mandating against treatment 6 and towards management. 7 Out of these discussions came the following negotiated interpreta- 8 tion about child-rearing in American society. 9 40 Over half of American marriages end in divorce, resulting in less social and 1 psychological containment for children. Society has developed psycho- 2 pharmacological containment instead. When children go off to college, 311 many have not developed sufficient emotional maturity in their families to OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 249

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1 manage the separation, and the family is less available to them because of 2 its fragmentation. Parents, guilty about not taking good enough care of their 3 children, expect the colleges to continue a parental role, and they hold the 4 college accountable. But colleges, fearful of litigation and trying to recover 5 their primary task of education, have moved away from the parental role. They now provide even less containment than formerly, with co-ed dormi- 6 tories, no on-site adult supervision, and few restrictions. Colleges then enact 7 the conflict by both turning to their college health services to provide 8 parenting and decreasing the financial resources to support it. So, for exam- 9 ple, college health services used to be a place where students could sleep 10 overnight if they were excessively intoxicated. Some colleges have cut 1 finances so that such services are no longer available. As a consequence, if 2 a student is intoxicated, it becomes a matter for the police. The police then 3 take over developmental containment in place of families and educational 4 institutions. This sequence has implications for the development of citizens 5 and for democracy. 6 7 This complex interpretation emerged from discussions across insti- 8 tutional and role boundaries carried out by people from different orga- 9 nizations with related tasks and grounded in cross-validating 201 interpretations. Recognizing that in this limited interpretive effort we 1 had not attended to crucial input from families, students, police, and 2 other stakeholders in these social dilemmas, we have brought our ini- 3 tial collaborative view of this aspect of the larger society back into our 4 institutions for further work, since the issues raised seemed congruent 5 to the tasks of all. 6 7 Westminster Abbey 8 9 It would be difficult to imagine anywhere more different from Austen 30 Riggs than Westminster Abbey. One has recently celebrated eighty- 1 five years of existence; the other at least a thousand and probably 2 more; a small hospital set in glorious countryside with a close group 3 of staff and patients in rural Massachusetts, compared with a city 4 tourist attraction with more than a million visitors a year. One is a 5 unique enterprise established on the basis of psychoanalysis, with its 6 intimacy, the other a public building in which 1000 attending feels a 7 small congregation; one lives by medical and residential fees, the other 8 by entrance charges, voluntary giving, some commercial activity and 9 a small investment portfolio, with no subsidy from church, parlia- 40 ment, or crown. 1 The Abbey’s statement of intent (known otherwise as mission state- 2 ment) is simple. It was drawn up in a few minutes’ Chapter meeting 311 and reads as follows: OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 250

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1 To serve Almighty God as a school of the Lord’s service by offering divine 2 worship daily and publicly. 3 To serve the Sovereign by daily prayer and by a ready response to requests 4 made by Her or on Her behalf. 5 To serve the nation by fostering the place of true religion within national 6 life, maintaining a close relationship with members of the House of 7 Commons and the House of Lords and with others in representative posi- 8 tions. 9 To serve pilgrims and all other visitors and maintain the tradition of hospi- 10 tality. 1 2 Unlike Riggs’s individual focus, clergy at the Abbey have at most fleet- 3 ing contact with any individual, and a strange ambiguity emerges. The 4 congregation is experienced as a crowd of individuals with little or no 5 personal connectedness and at the same time it is a unitary whole. For 6 example, it is reckoned that about three billion people watched 7 Princess Diana’s funeral. In the mind of the officiants the service was 8 designed to enable everyone, from all classes of society, to participate. 9 Westminster Abbey is not a normal church with the customary 201 activities beyond worship; it is known as a Royal peculiar. It is one of 1 only three, the others being St James Palace and St George’s, Windsor. 2 Roughly speaking, St James ministers to the staff and people of the 3 Royal palaces; St George functions in the more domestic setting of 4 Windsor Castle, and Westminster Abbey is more for the state occasion. 5 The Abbey stands at the heart of the British establishment. It is just 6 across the way from the Houses of Parliament and a short distance 7 from Buckingham Palace and Downing Street. Once it was a great 8 abbey within the Benedictine tradition. For various reasons, it was set 9 under the jurisdiction of the Pope and not the Archbishop of Canter- 30 bury. When the reformation reduced and then displaced papal author- 1 ity, the Abbey was in limbo. For a short period it became the Cathedral 2 of the short-lived Diocese of Westminster. Queen Elizabeth rapidly 3 saw that the alliance of church and parliament could become too pow- 4 erful, so she claimed the Abbey as her own and it became a Royal 5 peculiar – ‘Royal’ as in the gift of the monarch; ‘peculiar’, referring to 6 statutes specific to the Abbey. Such an anomaly is significant. By 7 removing a level of jurisdiction (that of bishops) and leaving the 8 equivalent person (the Dean) within the Abbey in a unique relation- 9 ship with the canons, the Queen created the prospect of creative work. 40 In essence, the Dean and Queen are in a pair, with an opening made 1 available for creative engagement with the task of the church. At 2 Westminster, the Dean has particular authority and certain powers, 311 which cannot be delegated to colleagues. There is, therefore, a tension OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 251

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1 between the two roles of the Dean: member of the corporate body (the 2 Dean and Chapter) and Dean of Westminster. For example, until 1901 3 the City of Westminster was actually governed by the Dean of West- 4 minster, the High Steward, and the High Bailiff. 5 Westminster Abbey is a place of religion in the broadest sense. 6 Thousands of people each year take the opportunity to worship, yet 7 the Abbey has no specific congregation apart from a handful of regu- 8 lar attendees. Most people who worship in the Abbey are drawn into 9 its vast historical and liturgical context. I recently met an American 10 visitor who asked whether Queen Elizabeth was married at the Abbey. 1 Without hesitation I replied that she had never been married but 2 died the virgin Queen and was buried in the east end of the Abbey. It 3 dawned on me when the visitor looked bewildered, that he meant the 4 only Queen Elizabeth he knew (the present Queen Elizabeth), while I 5 work daily with documents dating from 1560 and earlier from an insti- 6 tution which even then was old! Was my response one of simple con- 7 fusion, or was I, in my role, imbedded so firmly in the original 8 authorization of that role that I lost perspective? Such role-related 9 questions open a view into an interpretive stance. 201 Because of this complex context and its powerful sense of institu- 1 tion, the Abbey stands for the way the individual is linked to the larger 2 context. All the major monotheistic religions emphasize how the self 3 is inextricably linked to the larger collective of humanity, resisting any 4 excessive emphasis on the individual and the more contemporary 5 focus on spirituality, where the context is the self. 6 Something disturbing can happen when religious activity deviates 7 from its institutional dimensions and its wider corporate and social 8 roots. An example occurred in Sheffield, in the context of a highly 9 structured and customarily stable church – the Church of – 30 and not on the fringes of charismatic religion. 1 Crookes is an attractive Sheffield suburb. The population is a mix of 2 university staff, professional people, and students. The parish church 3 of St Thomas stands within the evangelical tradition with an empha- 4 sis on personal conversion and participatory worship. The new curate 5 (a young minister in training) was Christopher Brain. Because of his 6 intelligence, youth, and charisma, bishops did not bother to require 7 the usual procedures of selection and examination. Ordination, cus- 8 tomarily decided by the bishop with consultation, was a foregone con- 9 clusion. Brain was designated because of his believed empathy with 40 young people. The Church, like any other institution that thinks of the 1 future, over-values youth. Brain began his ministry with a small multi- 2 media event; and the congregation rapidly grew. The service was held 311 at nine o’clock in the evening and became popular with young people. OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 252

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1 Even church leaders endorsed it with their presence. Its success in 2 drawing crowds called for a larger church. Church authorities applied 3 a legal nicety to acquire a building in the centre of the city. The multi- 4 media worship became more elaborate, with a New Age mix of ecol- 5 ogy and spirit. The Archbishop of Canterbury endorsed this modern 6 approach to young people without even seeing it. Everywhere Chris- 7 topher Brain went he was feted and excused the normal training 8 required for clergy. He was set apart as an individual from the church, 9 without anyone noticing. Though not Royal, this unusual pair of the 10 minister and the church was also a kind of ‘peculiar’, but missing a 1 working connection with the church’s corporate functioning. 2 Soon, the bubble burst, with situations involving money, sex, and 3 manipulation. Counsellors went in force to help the damaged people. 4 But the real problem was the collective failure of all in authority 5 to exercise it – archbishop, bishop, archdeacon, vicar, theological 6 college, and in-service training officer. It is not that they did not act: 7 they acted, but failed to locate Christopher Brain in the context of the 8 larger church institution. In other words, their roles and awareness of 9 them did not function because they did not see that the limiting but 201 grounding connections between their institutional mission and the 1 more secular and seductive social context of this situation had some- 2 how to be included in any interpretation about what was actually 3 happening. 4 This example illuminates the dangers of easy interpretation without 5 attending to the context. The church readily paired with this young 6 minister in its eagerness to join the passions of the young. But, in my 7 view, it did not attend sufficiently to its unique context, to the ‘inter- 8 nalized dead father’, to the connection of the church with its own 9 tradition. Had it done so, it might have been able to incorporate the 30 perspective the young minister carried, while linking it and him 1 more fully to the larger mission of the church. As I considered this 2 interpretation, I had to notice that my view of these events was 3 inevitably shaped by my position at Westminster Abbey and my 4 imminent retirement from the role. Was I particularly sensitive in my 5 role to the opportunities and dangers of pairing? Did my age and tran- 6 sition skew my perceptions of the attractiveness of the young and new 7 ideas? All of these considerations and more would inevitably enter 8 into a more negotiated view of such a situation and an interpretation 9 of its larger meaning. What allowed the Church to get lost in this par- 40 ticular way? What forces was it contending with? To address these 1 questions – which lead to considering the future connection of the 2 Church with the next generation – would require input from a wide 311 range of sources. OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 253

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1 INTERPRETATION-FREE ZONE 2 Once we recognize that the ‘barbarians’ are not just outside the walls 3 – and tolerate the depressive recognition that death is an intrinsic 4 aspect of all of us – we can begin to think about the limitations of what 5 we might actually grasp as individuals. If we then consider the esca- 6 lating pressures on us, beginning with the intimate very small group 7 of the family from which we have to differentiate, and add the forces 8 coming from our group and organizational memberships and the 9 chaotic pressures of the larger society that push against our having 10 any reliable boundary at all, we can see how hard it is for any of us to 1 find a space to think. 2 Wesley Carr first used the term ‘interpretation-free zone’ during a 3 consultation offered to Ed Shapiro’s adolescent and family unit at 4 McLean Hospital (Shapiro and Carr, 1987). The programme was based 5 upon intense psychotherapy and group work. Every person was 6 involved, whatever their position, and most were becoming oppressed 7 by the work. On the one hand they believed in the program and 8 enjoyed its pioneering atmosphere. On the other hand they all felt that 9 their private lives were not sacrosanct. Anything might come out at 201 any time and it would be vigorously interpreted in relation to organi- 1 zational dynamics and the clinical work. What was happening was 2 that the transition from the life in a Group Relations conference was 3 being made to the workday life of a treatment unit with scarcely any 4 intermediate process of translation. 5 In a group relations conference there is structured time and enough 6 containment to live a relentless, dynamically demanding and reward- 7 ing life. It is a learning situation deliberately set up. The boundaries 8 are drawn and, so long as they are held, people can do anything. But 9 this is manifestly not the case in real life. Not that these conferences do 30 not represent real life; their intensity and brevity make it a specific 1 experience rather than the generality of everyday living. 2 Even in group relations conferences it may be possible to have an 3 interpretation-free zone, when individuals hide their process from the 4 group. That does not mean that the person is not interpretable by oth- 5 ers, but that the withdrawn individual or sub-group, while remaining 6 part of the dynamic, is not joining in the effort to see it. Some kind of 7 interpretation-free zone – dynamically significant for the system 8 because it authorizes a space for privacy – is inevitably developed for 9 the purpose of holding on to perspective and the boundaries of the self. 40 1 THE WORK OF OPUS 2 311 One of the efforts of OPUS is to bring people together to consider what OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 254

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1 is happening in the larger society. From the perspective of the ideas 2 we are developing in this paper, we would suggest that gathering a 3 group of self-selected individuals as listening posts for the purpose 4 of social study may be vulnerable. For what is for many people an 5 ‘interpretation-free zone’ – namely, their everyday life, political, social 6 and personal – is turned into a paradigm from which to interpret 7 larger movements in society. The listening post is designed as such a 8 place, but the self-authorized membership is not moved into place 9 by limiting and defining organizational tasks and roles nor by any 10 authorization to include differentiation and discontinuity. Such a 1 group, while inevitably interesting and stimulating, runs the risk of 2 being exploited by individuals. This is a phenomenon we recognize 3 from our conference experience. It is possible for people who often 4 believe that they know more to contribute in an esoteric fashion to a 5 discussion and for that presume to attain a state of wisdom. But it is 6 not wisdom we are seeking with this sort of interpretation: it is to find 7 a way of life that might be meaningful for a large number of people – 8 even the ‘barbarians’(!) – who have both different roles and different 9 approaches to the same data. 201 We wonder whether individuals might discover a different focus in 1 listening post discussions if they had more formally authorized roles 2 as representatives of their institutions. Rather than attempting to 3 locate the complex and poorly negotiated role of citizen, individuals 4 might be able to use representative roles on behalf of their institutions 5 as a more graspable intermediate zone between individual and soci- 6 ety, focusing on mission as a crucial link to the outside world. 7 Listening posts, functioning as groups of institutional representatives, 8 might then be able to create inter-group events to study connections 9 between organizations that can deepen the understanding of crucial 30 issues in the unfolding process of the larger society. 1 The need for focused attention to the contexts and roles represented 2 by individuals and to the need for an interpretation-free zone raises 3 questions about how we can locate ourselves in the dynamic process 4 of which we are part in order to establish sufficient ground for an 5 interpretation of our own. And why do it anyway? Is it worth the 6 effort? From our diverse experience in our institutions, we would both 7 respond ‘Yes!’, but with caution. The answer must be, we suppose, if 8 you wish to fly (as Joshua Shapiro puts it), then you need a launching 9 pad that is relatively free from external interpretive pressure. With this 40 freedom comes the possibility of experiencing both independence 1 from and dependence on a tradition, which Joshua draws attention to 2 in his remarks about losing his father and yet finding him every time 311 he says the magic word, ‘Dad’. OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 255

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1 In a chaotic, rapidly changing society, where limited contact con- 2 tributes to increased use of interpretative projection into others, hold- 3 ing to one’s negotiated and delegated roles and contexts can be 4 usefully grounding, and an interpretation-free space for reorientation 5 becomes essential. We see this in both of our organizations. At Austen 6 Riggs, the aim of the open setting is to keep patients in the external 7 social environment as they undergo the process of intensive psycho- 8 therapy. The Riggs community calls its collective work ‘examined 9 living’, but all worry from time to time whether too much of the 10 ‘examination’ can interfere with the living! To the patients, curiously 1 enough, life in the outside world may partly be the interpretation-free 2 zone that they are seeking. With a social space that is free from clini- 3 cally interpretive pressure, individuals can experiment without self- 4 consciousness. This allows them a creative freedom. That is not to say 5 that, from time to time, such a free space will not be interpreted; it just 6 means that the therapists and the patients recognize that there are 7 areas which – at least for the time being – are interpretation-free. As 8 the interpretive work of therapy becomes more self-assured, staff and 9 patients can open up more to the world in which they are set, as in 201 Riggs’s staff’s engagement with the college counsellors. 1 Similarly, in the Abbey it could be argued that the point of worship, 2 especially in an environment with less sense of congregational unity 3 and more links to the process of worship through the ages, can create 4 an interpretation-free zone. For example, the Creed may be said at 5 every service, but it does not mean that everyone there believes it. 6 Each stands in some relation to it, and some say it on behalf of others. 7 So, for example, one person can state, ‘I believe in God’ with convic- 8 tion, while having difficulty with the ‘resurrection of the body’. 9 Another, more rarely, might feel unsure about God but pretty clear 30 about the resurrection of the body. The corporate life of the church 1 suggests that, somewhere, someone is believing on behalf of others. 2 When I am doubtful about God, someone else carries that notion until 3 I can reorientate myself. That assumed space may be a dynamic inter- 4 pretation-free zone. In order to get from my lack of belief to the belief 5 of others, I may need to affirm a membership free of interpretation. 6 Thus, I will not be asked to articulate what I understand about God. 7 I will simply be asked to say that I believe in God and that is sufficient 8 for me to be able to bring together life and belief, emotion and inter- 9 pretation. It gives a perspective from which to inspect and consider the 40 data of everyday life. 1 We are struggling still and will continue to do so, probably for our 2 lifetime, with the legacy of Freud and others who declared that 311 some sense might be made of society. It may be that the attempt to OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 256

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1 understand society is a defence against the experience of despair about 2 the world, a grandiose effort to manage the unmanageable. But some 3 effort to make sense of the ungraspable by using our more familiar 4 contexts as holding places may none the less be essential for psycho- 5 logical survival. While we know from our own experience and study 6 that our efforts are not necessarily that brilliant or original, what is 7 original is the way we come to them and how we use them. As we 8 have indicated, both of us in our very different institutions have found 9 that this way of thinking has clarified our work with others. And that 10 surely is the test for all of us: whether we can work in our differing 1 roles, making as conscious as possible the small and large contexts we 2 each represent, and using our own particular approach based on 3 group relations without invoking it all the time. 4 Crucial is whether we can work with others in such a way that they 5 are led on to something new and original without really knowing 6 why. Rather than considering those who don’t speak our language 7 as barbarians, we may be able to find ways to discover their partici- 8 pation in a common enterprise. We both have the experience – at the 9 Abbey and at Riggs – that we can use Bion’s (1961) hypotheses and 201 approaches as a way of understanding, but we do not have to require 1 others to understand them in order to share perspectives with them. 2 3 Note 4 5 1. OPUS meeting, , November, 2005 – Plenary Presentation. 6 2. James Krantz, personal communication 7 8 References 9 30 Bion, W. (1961). Experiences in Groups. New York: Basic Books. 1 Carr, W. (1993) ‘Some consequences of conceiving society as a large 2 group’, Group: the Journal of the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society, 3 17: 235–244 4 Freud, S. (1913) ‘Totem and taboo’, Standard Edition of the Complete 5 Works of Sigmund Freud, XIII: 1–162. 6 Freud, S. (1921) ‘Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, S.E., 7 XVIII: 67–143. London: Hogarth. 8 Freud, S. (1923) ‘The ego and the id’, S.E., XIX: 3–66. London: Hogarth. 9 Freud, S. (1929) ‘Civilization and its discontents’, S.E., XXI: 59–145. 40 London: Hogarth. 1 Khaleelee, O. and Miller, E. J. (1985) ‘Beyond the small group; society 2 as an intelligible field of study’, in M. Pines (ed) Bion and Group 311 Psychotherapy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul OPUS/6/2 correx 10/14/06 10:53 AM Page 257

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1 Sartre, J. -P. (1948) No Exit. New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf. 2 Shapiro, E. R. (2003) ‘The maturation of American identity: a study of 3 the elections of 1996 and 2000 and the war against terrorism’, 4 Organizational and Social Dynamics, 3(1): 121–133. 5 Shapiro, E. R. (2005) ‘Joining a group’s task: the discovery of hope and 6 respect’, International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 55(2): 211–227. 7 Shapiro E. R. and Carr, A. W. (1987) ‘Disguised countertransference in 8 institutions’, Psychiatry, 50: 72–82. 9 Shapiro, E. R. and Carr, A. W. (1991) Lost in Familiar Places: Creating 10 New Connections between the Individual and Society. New Haven and 1 London: Yale University Press. 2 Trist, E. (1985) ‘Working with Bion in the 1940s: the group decayed’, 3 in M. Pines (ed.), Bion and Group Psychotherapy. London: Routledge 4 and Kegan Paul. 5 6 7 8 9 201 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 311