The Coherency of Group Analysis - Malcolm Pines
(Draft)

Based on a Lecture, Israel, May 1996

Group analysis, originating from the work of S H Foulkes, is a comprehensive, coherent account of our lifelong and often unsuccessful struggle to become, and remain, relatively healthy human beings. By 'relatively healthy', I mean to say living in reasonably good, tolerant relations with ourselves (our inner society) and with others (our external society).

In group analysis, this social aspect is essential, for we humans are social beings, deeply permeated throughout our lives by society, which shapes and forms us.

Group analysis originated from Foulkes' experiences as a neurologist, psychologist, psychoanalyst and social historian. He was, naturally, influenced by the networks of which he was part during his formative years. I shall describe some of these, and then outline some of the network of academic and clinical disciplines that constitute the current context of group analysis, influencing and influenced by the tradition he founded.

Influences on Foulkes

Michael Foulkes, as he later liked to be called, was originally named Sigmund Heinrich. He was born in Karlsruhe, Rhineland, the youngest son of a prosperous middle-class Jewish family, one that had not experienced strong anti-Semitism, and was seemingly well accepted in their local community. Foulkes was, apparently, somewhat indulged, and, like his elder brother, who captained the city football team and was a member of the German Olympic football squad, he was both athletic and studious.

Foulkes served in World War One as a wireless operator, after which he completed his medical studies. He was drawn to neurology and psychiatry and was profoundly influenced by two years of work under the direction of Kurt Goldstein, who had organised and directed a hospital for the treatment of brain injured soldiers from the German army. He found in Goldstein an inspiring leader, researcher and clinician.

Goldstein and Foulkes

In his major work 'The Organism', which he wrote as a refugee in Holland before he emigrated to the United States, Goldstein showed that the response of the brain-damaged patient to his injury is a consequence of both the psychology of the patient, and the disturbance of the whole central nervous system in response to localised cerebral damage. Goldstein was a pioneer in Gestalt psychology, collaborating with Adhemar Gelb in the development of subtle psychological tests that revealed the functional impairment of his patients, such as the loss of capacity for abstract thought. Foulkes absorbed from Goldstein the Gestalt holistic approach, which teaches that an entity is not to be understood as an assemblage of parts, but has to be seen in its wholeness, in context, as an organism in constant adaptation to its environment. The evolutionary thrust of this approach, of functional adaptation, I shall return to later in considering human evolution in groups.

Foulkes met dynamic psychology again in his contact with Paul Schilder. Schilder pioneered a psychoanalytic neurology and psychiatry, and is best known for his monograph 'The Image and Appearance of the Human Body', in which he showed how our body images are profoundly social as well as libidinal. It is noteworthy that Schilder was so convinced of the importance of social factors in psychological development and in psychological illness, that he anticipated Foulkes by working with small groups, although in these his approach was more individual than group-centred.

At the time of Foulkes' training as a psychoanalyst, his analyst was Helene Deutsch and Vienna was at the centre of psychoanalytic development. Freud had produced his structural theory, Wilhelm Reich was teaching character analysis, and there was a dawning recognition of the importance of three areas: Early child development, the mother-infant relationship and the influences of society in human development. Some research into these was beginning.

After his psychoanalytic qualification, Foulkes returned to Frankfurt, where the leading psychoanalyst, founder of the Psychoanalytic Institute, was Karl Landauer, another influential figure in Foulkes' intellectual development. Our knowledge about him is unfortunately limited. What we do know, however, is that there was a new confluence of sociological, principally Marxist theory with psychoanalytic theory through the shared discussion between psychoanalysts and sociologists. Such psychoanalysts included Landauer, Meng, Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and S H Foulkes; the sociologists included Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Karl Mannheim and Elias. It is to Norbert Elias that I now turn, for with him we meet the historical approach to psychology, emphasising the profound influence of society on individual psychology.

Elias and Foulkes

Elias, whose centenary was celebrated in 1997 with many international meetings, is a controversial and influential figure in contemporary sociology. His influence is mostly in continental Europe, in Holland, where he spent the last years of his life, and in Germany. Elias and Foulkes developed a relatively close friendship in the early post-World War Two years, when Elias was in London. Elias was an early member of Foulkes' circle and for a while he considered becoming a group analyst.

The essence of Elias' approach, encapsulated in his best-known work 'The Civilising Process', which Foulkes enthusiastically reviewed in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, is as follows:

1. The evolution of society profoundly affects individual psychodynamics.

2. A civilising process can be followed in European society from the 13th century onwards.

3. This process is revealed through the 'descent of manners', the changing prescriptions to young people as to how to behave in courtly society. This affects the correct way to deal, for example, with libidinal energy, eating, disposal of waste matter from the body, cleanliness and hygiene - every aspect of how to behave so as to obtain recognition and favours from their masters.

4. As individuals are instructed to civilise their behaviour and restraints are imposed on impulses, the strength of the social within the individual increases; where id was, ego begins to appear.

5. Society gradually monopolises the sanctioned used of violence, through instituting laws and punishments and assuming the rights over life and death. As centralised power increases, individuals are no longer allowed to attack or defend themselves impulsively against their fellows. In return for such self-restraint, they receive the protection of the law. Every form of state authority is to be both revered and feared. Individuals' superegos become an increasingly powerful internal force, as individuals are socialised and educated into deference to the law.

6. The profoundly social nature of individuals, always existing in chains of relationships, increases in complexity, inter-dependent as we are within those increasingly longer chains that modern society evolves, where our daily needs can only be met through actions of myriads of unknown others. Elias refers to this process as figuration.

Elias' influence on group analysis is that we constantly examine and question the psychoanalytic primacy of projection over introjection. His legacy is the enduring challenge made by group analysts that psychology, including psychoanalysis, has not yet accepted the depth of the social within each one of us. In this context we might recall that there are societies where the essence of the person is in their connectedness with family, kin and clan, indeed with their entire human and non-human environment. Such societies may have little use for our (Western) construction of the individual, and may even have significant difficulties understanding it.

Elias and Foucault

We can compare and contrast Elias' construction of the self in the light of historical processes with that of the other outstanding social theorist, Michael Foucault. Their different, yet in some respects complementary approaches are well laid out by Dennis Smith (2001) in 'Norbert Elias and Modern Social Theory'. Elias is the quiet, academic, German Jewish theorist; Foucault the revolutionary French activist. Foucault, thirteen years of age when ' The Civilising Process' was published in 1939, grew up in Poitiers, a French provincial town where he felt stifled in a cultural hothouse; in contrast, Elias' German Jewish setting was a relatively pleasant cocoon.

Elias illuminated the essential connectedness of humans, interdependent through chains of dependency, subject to the tides of historical processes. Through understanding these processes we obtain some leverage, we can see through to the depths of the social unconscious, thereby lessening our unconscious imprisonment in the chains of history. Elias accepted Freud's structural theory, but showed how these structures have an historical development, as described above.

Foucault, in contrast, lived out his subversive attacks on the mental straightjacket of bourgeois society; he highlighted the bonds of discipline, the stifling straightjacket of a self whose discourse is kept in chains, chains to be broken through calculated violence and subversion. As Smith (2001) put it:

'Elias tried to swallow the world, Foucault tried to spit it out.'

p.97

Elias encompassed Freud's psychoanalysis within his wider framework, thereby enabling Foulkes to envisage group analysis as a possible therapy of society around the small group, as well as therapy of the individual within it. Foucault opposed psychoanalysis, which to him seemed to stifle the vitality of the rebellious imagination.

Similarly to Moreno, he claimed the dream as an arena of creativity, a plunge into a hidden, forgotten reality. Foucault follows Nietzsche, the Dionysian, the disrupter of structure. Elias, more Appollonian, shows us the necessary structures of society. I had previously outlined this dialectic in the evolution of modern psychotherapy, in 'Psychoanalysis, Psychodrama and Group Psychotherapy: Step-Children of Vienna' (Group Analysis, 1986, 19.2.101).

Our editor, Ben Davidson, has suggested that Group Analysis might, paradoxically, be seen in this context as a technology of empowerment, social liberation within the discourse of psychiatry, a discourse which Foucault construed as rooted in its entirety in the confinement and eradication of deviants. Foucault saw the lineage of psychiatry stretching back to the control structure of religion in the monastic disciplines, later translated into techniques exercising control by priests over communicants, the precursors of the psychoanalysts. Clearly Elias, who at one time thought of training as a group analyst, held a different viewpoint.

Contemporary support for Foulkes' approach

The group analytic concept of the individual being constituted to a profound degree by social factors has received much encouragement from two areas: current psychological and neurobiological research in child development; and the deeper study of the nature of communication and language. Here I shall sketch out something of what personally I have found to be important.

Child development research

In recent years, research into child development has increasingly focused its attention on the exquisite sensitivity of caregiver/infant relationships. Close observations with open eyes, and the appropriate technical equipment, have revealed the following processes, which are present both pre- and post-natally:

1. Infants' attention can be attracted by adults very soon after birth. They will imitate adult facial gestures such as tongue protrusion even one hour after birth.

2. Imitation involves active scanning of the visual environment for what the infant finds 'interesting'.

3. The most interesting things are the facial expressions and the sounds coming from fascinating adult caregivers.

4. Infants are constantly and actively seeking the response of others to their own actions as well as themselves responding to the activities of others.

5. Successful completion of units of activity between infants and caregivers gives pleasure; conversely, failure to complete such units of activity gives displeasure.

6. Human activity can be conceived of as essentially 'dialogical', involving partners in mutual synchronised and interesting activities. In the absence of such activities, development falters, is arrested or regresses.

These processes affect infant development in the most profound manner. They affect bonding, attachment and mentalisation, by which I refer to the development of mind and the awareness of being in a society of persons who are like-minded, but also different. They also affect both the acquisition of social and emotional intelligence, and cognitive development. On the neurological level, there is increasing evidence that neuronal networks forming the basis of mind are also deeply affected by the early processes of the infant/caregiver relations and interactions.

Through these advances we see how profoundly infant mental and emotional development is indebted to 'good enough' environmental responses. Understanding the significance of these early influences also makes us aware how difficult it may be to influence such early factors by psychotherapy. Nonetheless, while we must accept the limits of our powers, this confirmation of our belief in human development as profoundly social may reinforce our ability to reach to very basic and early levels of human nature through our group analytic work. For instance, the realms of psychosis and delinquency are opening to group analytic techniques adapted to the special conditions of these disorders.

The nature of communication and language

I turn now to other aspects of human development, language acquisition, which is also encouraging to the group analytic enterprise. I shall be drawing on Russian psychology, on Lev Vigotsky and Mikhail Bakhtin.

Vigotsky, a Jewish researcher of genius, was the major force behind the development a social psychology of infancy and childhood that has significant differences to the Piagetian model. Vigotsky, influenced in his thinking and research by Marxist theory, as were the Frankfurt sociologists, claimed that higher mental functioning in the individual is rooted in social life:

'Human psychological nature represents the aggregate of internalised social relationships that have become functions for the individual and form the individual structure.'

19??, p.??

Note that he writes not of object relations, but of social relations. His description of social relations becoming functions for the individual predates ideas from Kohut and the self-psychologists regarding the internalisation of self-object functions and self-object relationships by decades.

There are two axioms from Vigotsky's work that I present because I consider them both relevant and revelatory for group analysis. The first derives from his insistence on a genetic psychology, on tracing psychological phenomena to their origins. On the basis of his researches he asserted that:

'Any function in a child's development appears twice on two planes. First it appears on the social plane and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an inter-psychological category, and then within the child as an intra-psychological category. Internal mental processes remain quasi-social in nature and even in their own private sphere human beings retain the function of social interaction.'

(p??)

The second of Vigotsky's axioms is most apposite to group analytic theory and practice, which uses the group to aid in the psychological development of its individual members through the capacities of the group as a whole, which are greater than those of any one of its members. Groups have a potentially greater store of human experience and mentalities to draw from, though the negative of this must not be neglected, the anti-developmental components of group life recently named 'anti group' by Nitsun (19??).

Vigotsky's axiom is what he called 'The Zone of Proximal Development', defined as

'the distance between a child's actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the higher level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.'

p.??

The individual, isolated child, as the object of study, is a laboratory and educational artefact, for the natural situation of a child, as we have all experienced, is to be with helpful others, our 'more capable peers'. Anxiety in the test situation of the school of life will always hamper our capabilities. In psychotherapy, we have to make judicious decisions about the appropriate balance between, on the one hand, exposing patients to the anxiety of the group-analytic unstructured situation so as to rise to challenges that they are capable of solving for themselves; and, on the other, recognising when conductor interventions are appropriate. We are in the area sensitively described by Donald Winnicott with his concept of 'being alone in the presence of another'. The basis of internal security is, as Vigotsky wrote, an interpsychological event that has been internalised and appears as intra-psychic.

I have been greatly stimulated by another Russian thinker - Mikhail Bakhtin. Both Vigotsky and Bakhtin wrote under Leninism and Stalinism, and were influenced both positively and negatively by that experience. Bakhtin, a philosopher of language, was, indeed, sent into internal exile under Stalin, and knowledge of his work was suppressed for many years. His approach, which is congruent and coherent with the view of human development now coming from psychoanalysis and other sources, has been named 'dialogical'. Bakhtin's view of language is intrinsically social. As such, his theories are in opposition to those of Saussure and Chomsky, which have gained wide acceptance in the west, and he opposes them on much the same grounds that led Vigotsky to oppose Piaget's tenets. Like Vigotsky, Bakhtin gives primacy to the social over the individual.

For Bakhtin, the fundamental unit of language is neither the word, nor even the sentence, but the 'utterance':

'Speech is always cast in the form of an utterance belonging to a particular and speaking subject and outside this form it doesn't exist.'

(p.??)

The voice speaking, uttering, always exists in a social milieu and addresses the other, seeking a response. The 'illocutionary act' is to turn to someone else, and the 'locution', or utterance, is thus a link in a chain of communication.

'Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient: they are aware of and mutually reflect one another.'

(p.??)

This calls to mind Foulkes' belief that the conversation of a group is a series of linked communications, of unconscious responses and interpretations, which we try to hear and understand. As far as I know, Foulkes had no knowledge of Vigotsky or Bakhtin, though he was keenly interested in the nature of communication and in the constraints and facilities of language.

According to Bakhtin, we are constituted through dialogue, through what he has called 'the architectonics' of self. There is a form of auditory mirroring that is a crucial means by which we gain information about ourselves, through the verbal responses of others, their intonations, their spoken and unspoken messages. From earliest infancy we are in search of understanding, which is mediated through the other. Any true understanding, according to Bakhtin, is dialogic in nature, for as we listen and try to understand, we are laying down a set of our own answering words. 'The greater their number and weight, the deeper and more substantial our understanding will be.' This beautifully encapsulates those moments in group analysis when the utterances of a speaker are met with deep resonance from others in ways which constantly amaze me with their deep and often compassionate understanding, with the telling of experiences from another life at another time, that yet illuminates dark areas of the speaker's mind, areas that alone they do not have access to, but which are given back to them illuminated through the responses of the other.

Though Bakhtin confines himself to spoken and written language - he wrote masterfully on the novel - his principle of dialogicality can be applied by us to the dialogical relations of infants and caregivers that characterise early life. Before attaining the capacity for speech, we have what have been named 'proto-conversations', the amodal, sensory communications revealed in research which have shown that good mothering involves vocal motor gestures and games between infants and adults.

We join in and show interest and give attention to the babe's vocalisations and gazes. When we show the infant that we are doing something interesting and amusing with them, looking at the same toy together, turn-taking with the infant, we are imaginatively crossing the solipsistic space between two separate biological organisms. By these actions we begin to form the intersubjective realm and intersubjective experience that is crucial for the development of mind, for it gives the child the beginnings of a realisation that it possess a mind, is a minded person, who may find in the other a like-minded being who is at times alike, but at other times different. This is the crucial stage that seems not to be reached in autism and is significantly lost or impaired in psychosis.

I am not qualified to relate Bakhtinian thought to that of his great contemporary Ludwig Wittgenstein, who coined the term 'language-game' to describe the mutuality of language and context (Hirschkopf, 1999). What is fascinating, though, is the suggestion that Nikolai Bakhtin, Mikhail Bakhtin's elder brother by one year, influenced, through conversations with him, Wittgenstein's shift from the logical positivism of the Tractatus to the more broadly speculative Philosophical Investigations. Whilst Mikhail stayed in Soviet Russia, his brother enlisted in the White Army and went into exile. Nikolai and Mikhail maintained a remarkable closeness in their interests, particularly in their deep exploration of the nature of language, up until Nikolai's death in 1950, having founded the Linguistic Department for Birmingham University (Clark & Holquist, 1984).

Dialogical Networks

The sources I have drawn on from developmental psychology and neurobiology and from linguistic psychology and philosophy, are, in my view, powerful arguments for the assertion that group analysis is a theory and praxis in its own right, which draws on developments within its own clinical field and in adjacent ones to create a distinct and coherent discipline.

Each discipline has a unique viewpoint, as does each one of us. No one discipline, or single individual has had the same genesis, or life experiences, so each can enrich the other - what Bakhtin called 'a surplus of vision'. Thus we celebrate 'heteroglossia' as Bakhtin called it, the meeting in language of minds who express themselves in their own ways, as opposed to 'monoglossia', the single language that tries to impose itself as the authority, the truth.1

Bakhtin wrote about what he called the 'authoritative voice', a voice based on the assumptions that utterances and their meanings are fixed, not modifiable as they come into contact with new voices.

'The authoritative voice demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our own, it binds us quite independently of any power it might have to persuade us internally; we encounter it with its unconditional allegiance; instead of functioning as a generator of meaning or a thinking device there is no play with its borders, no gradual and flexible transition, no spontaneously creative styling variants. We meet this in the authoritarian father, dogmatic teachers, the authoritarian state, in fundamentalism and the ideological voice. It is a voice that can only be totally affirmed or totally rejected; one cannot divide it up, agree with one part, partially accept another part, utterly reject a third portion.'

19??, pp.??-??

We have met this voice in dogmatic systems in psychology, in some aspects of psychoanalysis and it can be argued in some branches of group analysis. In the light of contemporary events, this thought and the following contrast seems particularly poignant and vital.

A contrast to the authoritative voice is the 'internally persuasive' voice, which is half ours and half someone else's. This allows for dialogical interanimation, for interplay, a voice that accepts that we live in a world that is always ambiguous from which our words can reveal a certain but temporary clarity.

'Such a word awakens new and independent words, that it organises masses of our words from within and does not remain in an isolated and static condition: it is not finite but open; in each of the new contents that dialogise it, this discourse is able to reveal ever new ways to mean.'

p.??

Those of you who were privileged to know and to learn with Foulkes will recognise that his was that internally persuasive voice - the voice of the turtledove - that allowed new thoughts to arise and arrive. I hope that I am facilitating such new thoughts and meanings for you by sharing in those ideas that have given rise to new thoughts in me.

An instance of these new thoughts is in my approach to that verbal intervention that we name 'interpretation'. Nowadays I see this as 'the availability of the therapist through words for the mental life of an-other or others', as an internally persuasive voice, a voice in the circle, less authoritative than previously. I try to see an aspect of the complex interactive field that encompasses myself within the group as a whole and, by my interventions, I hope to awaken new and independent words, new ways to mean. The verbal intervention is one particular way of being with the group, for the presence of the group conductor is of itself a powerful intervention in the group process presenting his/herself as a focus for the mobilisation of unconscious forces that permeate the social life of the group.

Conclusion

To conclude, I will introduce you to some of the very stimulating ideas found in the recent book 'The Making of the Modern Mind' by the Canadian psychologist Merlin Donald. He brings together findings from neurobiology, anthropology and cognitive psychology to describe the evolution of the mind of Homo Sapiens from that of our ape ancestors. He argues that encephalisation, the increase in brain size and structural complexity in humans, is an adaptation to the demands of social living where complex relations have to be established, monitored and maintained, so that members of the social group may acquire the ability mentally to represent both themselves, others and the complex social structure of the whole group.

Each evolutionary stage in society has its own neurobiology. The ape and early hominid lived episodically, dominated and entrapped by the present; the appearance of mimesis, the ability to imitate and thereby to re-present the past in the present is the next stage and involves groups in ritual; the subsequent stage is the mythic, where questions are asked and answered about the fundamentals of human existence through religion and legend.

With each of these stages there is an adaptive biological alteration affecting not only brain structure but also many other bodily structures.

However, when we reach the present stage of modern humankind, reaching back now to our Middle Eastern and African ancestry who invented writing in its various pre-phonetic form - cuneiform, hieroglyphic - what is added to the biology is the technology of graphic representation. Through the use of these visual symbols the next adaptation is the creation of External Memory. Now information is preserved and transmitted and potentially widely available through, for example, the Internet. The availability of external graphic memory is an essential step to analytic thought leading on to theory, the forms of thought that we have inherited from ancient Greece. Theory is anti-mythic; things and events have to be stripped of their previous mythic significance before they can be subjected to 'objective' theoretic analysis.

I say this well knowing that the subjective element is always present in so-called objective analysis. Similarly, the mythic is always with us and connects us deeply to shared beliefs and to human experiences that cannot be reached through higher mental functions. Foulkes acknowledged the deep presence of the Jungian archetypal level in human mentality which our Jungian colleagues are exploring with us: our work is in the circle, the symbolic container, the archetype of the Great Mother who is both active and passive, creative and destructive, to which we can journey both backwards and forwards in company.

I end with this thought, because constantly we need to balance both the mythic and the analytic modes of understanding. What we should beware of is re-mythologising what has been demythologised. We create our mythic ancestors - Freud, Jung, Moreno, Foulkes, Bion, form cults, followings, antagonisms, to assert the truth and superiority of our own myth. We must respect our ancestors, but we must not regard them as graven images and worship them.

1. It strikes me that I am perhaps more open to these Russian theorists because, though born in Britain, both my parents were Russian born, and educated in medicine there. They left in 1919, having met and married when serving as doctors during World War One, and much of my early social experience exposed me to the beauty of the Russian language and the warmth of the Russian Jewish family life. (back)

REFERENCES

Elias N., "Psychoanalysis, Psychodrama and Group Psychotherapy: Step-Children of Vienna". (Group Analysis, 1986, 19.2.101).

Wertsch, J W. Voices of the Mind. A socio-cultural approach to mediated action. Harvester Wheatsheaf: London 1991.

Holqist, Michael. Dialogism. Bakhtin and his World. London: Routledge. 1990.

Morson, G S (ed) Bakhtin. Essays and dialogues on his work. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986.

Merlin Donald. Origins of the Modern Mind. Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge Mass. Harvard University Press. 1991.

Kumin, I (1995) Pre-object Relations. New York. Guilford.

Hirschkopp K, 1999. Mikhail Bakhtin: An aesthetic for democracy. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Clark K, Holquist M, 1984. Mikhail Bakhtin, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Morson G S (ed 1986). Bakhtin: Esssays and Dialogues on his work. Chicago. University of Chicago Press