The Evident,the Secretive and the Mysterious in Analytic Group Psychotherapy

Introduction

In Laish (1994), Aaron Appelfeld tells the story of a group of Jewish pilgrims who make their way along the Prut River towards the port of Galati to take the boat to the holy city of Jerusalem. The convoy of wanderers includes murderers, elderly religious men, compulsive thieves, merchants, prophets, a trio of musicians, wagon leaders and others.

Laish is an orphan whose life story unfolds as the convoy goes along its way. Through his relationships with the people in the convoy and the discovery of their secrets and mysteries, he becomes more connected to his own inner world. Through his eyes, we, the readers, encounter the variety of characters and the overall atmosphere, a strange mixture of secrets and mystery, grace and sin.

At the beginning of the novel, Laish says,

The convoy, so they say, is headed Jerusalem. I doubt it . . . in the name of Jerusalem we are always welcomed with piety . . . The convoy is a motley crew . . . everyone in the convoy has a dreadful story or sickness. (Appelfeld, 1994: 5, 24)

For me, this novel is an allegory of analytic group life. Members have the same goal as the travellers in the convoy: the seeking of relief. Like the travellers, they hope for redemption and spiritual attainment in the face of harsh, everyday reality. There is a similar on-going dialogue in the convoy and the therapy group about the various dimensions of human existence. There are eight wagons in the convoy and these could represent the eight participants in an analytic group. Each wagon, as each group member, is composed of a range of part-object and part-self representations. Some of these disappear during the expedition, as they do in the therapy group, as travellers and members undergo processes of personal integration.

I chose these three dimensions—the evident, the secretive and the mysterious—because they afford us not only a deep understanding of group life but of human existence itself. In contemporary life we strive for the proper balance between these dimensions. But they also have a timeless quality, and references to them can be inferred in the writings of Plato more than two thousand years ago (Plato, 260 BC).

In the analytic group we strive for such a balance between the three dimensions. It seems to me that Foulkes infers reference to them when he writes about conscious and unconscious communication in the group:

Group analytic theory and practice has almost from its beginnings paid special attention to the communication process and has considered it of central importance . . . communication can be verbal; and non verbal; conscious and unconscious. The latter is of course; of particular interest to us . . . There is also an increased understanding on the part of the group and its individual members of the more primitive, symbolic, unconscious meaning of communications. The group recaptures what Erich Fromm calls ‘the forgotten language’. Thus the area of what the group can share, have in common, communicate is enlarged in the ongoing process of psychotherapy. Principally everything happening is considered in its communicational aspect. (Foulkes, 1964: 68)

I will now discuss the first dimension, the ‘evident’. I will then move on to the ‘secretive’. Finally, I will discuss the most elusive dimension, the ‘mysterious’.

The Evident

The book Laish opens as follows:

My name is Laish, and those who like me call me Laishu. I have yet to run into anyone with such a strange name. There are people who are bemused, but most just accept it. I’ve heard that the name comes from Hungary. Who knows?—my parents died young. A few years ago, I could still see them in a blurred way. Now I’m fifteen, and their features have been effaced from my memory. At times, they’ll surprise me in a dream, calling my name. If I ran into them in the street, I wouldn’t recognize them. And I, too, must surely have been forgotten by them. (Appelfeld, 1994: 1)

This opening passage supplies us with concrete facts about the storyteller: his name, his nationality and critical details of what he remembers and does not remember about his parents. This data constitutes ‘the evident’ dimension of Laish’s life. What is evident does not need an explanation. It is very close to Foulkes’ concept of ‘the current level’, which in turn is Foulkes connected to Wernick’s term: the external or allopsychic world. It expresses a sense of community, and the conductor represents authority (Foulkes 1964).

Example 1: Therapist’s Inattention to the Setting: The Evident Dimension

My group members usually gather in my waiting room during the few minutes before official starting time. I see to it that an outside door leading to the waiting room opens 15 minutes early. In one of our recent group meetings I forget to unlock the door on time. Inside my office, I hear voices outside, realize my error and go out and open the door. There are still 10 minutes before the official starting hour.

During the first part of the meeting no one brought up my error. One patient, who always arrived earlier than others, was quiet for some time. Finally I asked how she felt about the locked door. She said when she saw it she thought I might have cancelled the meeting. Her sense of reality was jarred. She waited for a while until another member arrived and he too thought that the meeting might have been cancelled. Their comments led other members to discuss their feelings of rejection and fantasies about what I have might been busy with behind that closed door.

The first part of this discussion was about the evident dimension, i.e. the door, the waiting room, the official starting time. But it led into a discussion of both the secretive, i.e. what I may have been hiding behind the closed door, and even mysterious dimensions, i.e. the unexplained sudden disappearance of a familiar place.

Perspectives on the Evident

The evident dimension is reflected in all the arrangements that form the group setting and the rules that determine group behaviour. This information does not require particular awareness or consciousness. It constitutes realistic data, which helps one orient him or herself to the situation. Foulkes’ concept of the current level of communication, similar to the evident dimension, implies close contact between the outside world and the ego. It expresses the social nature of consciousness.

In the analytic group, the ‘evident’ dimension of each participant enables fundamental contact. At first, people present the public aspects of themselves: their work, age, and family status. But these details alone are not enough to create close relationships. Members who only stay in this domain are experienced as dull, and cannot hold the interest of others for very long. Interpersonal attraction is enhanced when the secretive and/or mysterious dimensions begin to make their appearance. Members yearn for more than just that which is seen.

The Secretive

As the convoy moves on Laish becomes pre-occupied with the secrets of his fellow travellers.

Menachem was one of the first of those whom the Holy Man gathered about him. He believed that in Jerusalem Menachem’s eyes would be opened . . . Like all of us here, he, too has grave secrets . . . Congealed within us there is a deep secret . . . a young girl named Mamshe has been shut away for years . . . at night, mostly on summer nights, she gets up on her knees and screams like a wounded animal.

During the journey certain heretofore-unknown things are revealed to him.

We are near the town where your dear dead mother was born . . . this thought that I once had a mother and that we were now approaching the town where she was born, moved me greatly . . . occasionally I get hold of some scrap of information about my parent’s life . . . and I haven’t been able to solve the riddle. (Appelfeld, 1994: 28–9, 35–6, 65)

The Oxford Dictionary gives several definitions of the word ‘secret’, and elaborates on its components and derivatives. The necessary condition sin qua non for qualifying as a secret is intended concealment. A secret implies there is a ‘place’, metaphorical or concrete, where one keeps private things, such as certain pieces of furniture. It also refers to a person who is charged with guarding confidences, such as a secretary of state. There is an etymological closeness between secret and sacred, which refers to beliefs of a secluded sect or distinguished society. In Hebrew there is a connotation between the word ‘secret’ (sod) and the holy book, Kabbalah (discipline and school of thought concerned with the mystical aspect of Judaism). From the ethical point of view, the word secret does not necessarily have qualitative value; it can be neutral, in contrast to the word ‘lie’ which has an a priori negative connotation. However, in relationships secrets have ethical value. Secrets shape dyads, triangles and surreptitious alliances. They determine closeness and distance in relationships (Landau, 2003).

The issue of secrets is very central to psychology and to the psychology of therapeutic groups. In his earliest writings Freud was occupied with interpreting the secrets of the mind. The exposure of secrets was central to his therapeutic technique and research (Freud, 1893). Freud claimed that people have secrets stemming from traumatic events in their childhood and the therapist must find and reveal them through an active procedure such as hypnosis or suggestion and then present them to the patient.

Example 2: The Desire to Reveal and the Desire to Conceal. The Secret Dimension

My group surprised me in the way members quickly brought up sexual subjects at the beginning of the first several sessions. Tamar told the group about her new boyfriend, who did not initiate sexual contact. Joseph told the group that he broke up with his girlfriend because she could not attain sexual satisfaction nor enjoy any sexual contact. I was taken aback and embarrassed by this rapid openness. There seemed no place for privacy. Instead, there was extreme pressure for members to participate in indiscriminate collective exposure.

Amos was an exception. He did not share the others’ openness. In fact, he changed the subject by talking about technical difficulties in getting to the sessions. He was late to every meeting because the buses were crowded and did not stop at his station. I then said,

We were all busy with finding the best way to reach the group. Some of you came so heavily loaded with issues that there was not enough room to get to everything. We behaved as though we all knew each other when in fact; we still don’t all know other’s names.

With this intervention something calmed down and the group began to deal with more concrete information about various members as well as some of their opinions on different matters.

During the following two years, Tamar continued to share her life’s experiences in great detail. She would talk with equal readiness about her sexual experiences, a fight with a colleague at work and disappointment with her parents who, during her childhood when she went away, would never make the slightest effort to convince her to return home. She had cried a great deal.

Her incessant talking seemed to be a throwback to her incessant crying as a child, as though it helped her to hold on to the others in the group. At one point Asher told her, ‘Don’t worry, Tamar. We won’t leave you’. After that she calmed down and talked in a more direct, decisive manner. Within the group’s steady, reassuring environment she could eventually develop an inner container. She has achieved an ability to be alone in the presence of the group (Winnicott, 1958).

The opposite problem—the rigid holding of secrets—was presented by Asher, who tended to participate in a withholding, cynical sort of way. He joked a lot and rarely answered a question directly.

Nonetheless, when after a month’s break a member returned and said that he had been hospitalized for depression, Asher showed great interest. When I addressed Asher, I saw he had tears in his eyes. He said, ‘What happened to the hospitalized member touched me. I myself had a terrible experience in school. I couldn’t learn and the other children used to tease me terribly. You never get over something like that’.

The group was quite shocked, and Asher himself seemed quite stunned at his outburst. His ability to share these painful experiences was a new and very important change for him.

Members have different roles in helping each other let go of secrets. They seem to be helped by the gradual exposure of their inner pain and shame in front of the group.

Perspectives on Secrecy

The psychotherapeutic group can evoke strong and sometimes incomprehensible emotions. Some of these complex states may be connected to the existence of complicated and pervasive secrets, which may have deep implications for psychotherapy.

This view is elaborated by Rashkin who in turn relates to Abraham and Torok’s ‘phantom theory’ (Rashkin, 1992). The latter suggests that when a shameful experience is blocked from conscious or simply kept in secret, symptoms can appear. This conception explains, for example, the phenomenon of ‘trans-generational haunting’ in which an individual’s behaviour is influenced by a secret originally kept by an ancestor.

Yassa (2002) elaborates on this notion and suggests that trauma occurs when an individual undergoes an experience he cannot psychically metabolize i.e., cannot know, think, verbalize or symbolize and thereby transform into a bearable aspect of his experiential world. These experiential fragments are then split off and maintained intact in isolated psychic regions and have the quality of a secret. The subjective experience is a sense of harbouring a foreign entity, a ‘something’ that gives rise to inexplicable feelings and sometimes to psychic and somatic symptoms. This ‘psychic phantom’ can be passed on through the generations, becoming an insidious family secret.

The analytic group can contain such ‘phantom’ contents. These secrets can be opened up if there is careful listening by group members and therapist. But this path is often difficult and takes time, particularly with members whose families led very secretive lives. They tend to withhold information for fear of destructive consequences. As Behr writes,

The isolated or symptomatic area becomes walled off by a barrier of tension across which thoughts and fantasies are projected. Individuals in a stranger group harbor secrets until the levels of tension accompanying them have dropped to a point where they feel safe enough to disclose the secrets. (Behr, 1994: 177)

Nitsun, too, writes of the therapeutic effect of opening up certain highly charged subject in the group. Discussing sexuality is extremely difficult but highly important. For most people, their sexual relations, and especially their sexual fantasies, are intensely personal and private experiences. ‘This is a sensitive area of intervention, since it may unwittingly repeat some aspect of the primal dynamic, such as an unwanted exposure or intrusion, and merits careful consideration’ (Nitsun, 1994: 138).

Yalom (1985) also investigated the deepest secrets kept by patients and found there were certain universal secrets. The most common secret is a deep conviction of basic inadequacy. Next in frequency is a deep sense of interpersonal alienation. The third most frequent category is sexual secrets, often a dread of homosexual inclinations. Overcoming fears of exposure and discussing them in a group has great therapeutic potential.

Not all writers see therapeutic value in exposing secrets in the group. Gross (1951), the drive psychology theoretician, writes that secrets appear for the first time during the anal stage. Their content is of central importance, precious property one cannot give up (Gross 1951; Margolis 1966). This positive view of holding secrets allows a more sympathetic understanding of secrets in the group, as reflected in Tamar’s development described above in Example 2.

A similar positive view of the function of secrets is put forward by Khan (1978), who sees some secrets as an expression of potential space. According to him, they have a life-affirming role in the development of the self. Secrets are a ‘place’ where one can go to in order to absent one’s self both from one’s own internal world, and from the traumatizing aspects of one’s external environment.

According to Ekstein and Caruth (1972) and Caruth (1985), the holding of a secret marks the achievement of separation. Again, we saw this developmental achievement with Tamar, in Example 2, who learned in the group to ‘contain’ certain personal experiences.

Silverstein makes an important differentiation between secrets and privacy in group psychotherapy. Whereas secrets can jeopardize the group’s survival, privacy is the right of each participant to choose the appropriate time and manner in which he or she reveals intimate information about him or herself. On the struggle between self-disclosure and privacy in therapy groups, he writes:

Intimacy involves a desire to know and to be known. Groups produce an internal conflict between the desire to reveal and the desire to conceal. The ultimate working through of shame, the creation of intimacy and increased self-esteem occurs as a result of the revealing of one’s self, one’s feelings, and one’s secrets. (Silverstein 1993: 109)

The Mysterious

In the novel Laish, the travellers undergo certain mystical experiences. When they visit the Holy man of Vishnitz he speaks to them:

he talked about darkness, and about smothering materialism that keeps the light from us and turns us into slaves of body, property, and money. The musicians, who had been temporarily freed from the tyranny of the wagon drivers, lost no time. There was a mournful sweetness to the way they played that brought tears to people’s eyes . . . their playing were slow and reflective. Each with his own instrument told of their hardships from the outset of the journey . . . For the frail, elderly men the songs are like prayer . . . Afterwards they sit and read Kabbalah, dismissing Laish, whom they consider too young for this sacred activity. (Appelfeld, 1994: 132–3)

I have chosen to use the word ‘mysterious’ to represent this third dimension, though other words such as ‘archetypical’ or ‘spiritual’ might serve just as well. The Oxford Dictionary defines mystery as something whose cause or origin is impossible to explain or understand. It refers to those aspects of experience which cannot be explained logically or rationally. It also implies spiritual awareness.

This dimension of mystery is also applicable to therapy groups. Usandivaras (1986) claimed that the therapeutic group allows its members to revisit archaic stages of human evolution in which magical thought prevails and archetypal images emerge in ancient myths stored in the collective unconscious. The therapist is a kind of shaman and everything she says and does is charged with the numinous character of the collective unconscious. We know, for example, that religious and communal rites, which take place in group form, are sometimes connected with journeys to the underworld, as in the Eleusinian mysteries of Greek antiquity.

Example 3: The Appearance of the Inexplicable: The Mysterious Dimension

The group meeting began with Judith’s dream: ‘I lay in my bed with Dana (her daughter) and Dana’s father next to me. Dana performed magic for her grandfather and changed something into a bird’. Group members began associating to the dream. Perhaps, I suggested, the child in the dream reflected the group’s hope for metamorphosis, a transformative wish.

Then several participants talked about what their fathers had done during Israel’s wars. Joseph’s father had fought in the 1948 War of Independence and now was very old. Joseph said, ‘I cannot have a really close relationship with him’. Amos also felt distanced from his father, who was closer to his friends than to members of his own family. Judith used to be very close to her father, but since her mother’s death she had found out many upsetting things about his behaviour and now felt alienated from him.

The atmosphere in the group had become oppressive and frightening. The words and expressions used by participants seemed to reflect what Cox and Theilgaard (1997) have called ‘archaic language’, easily identified but hard to analyse. It can be a sign of primordial content. In the collective ‘un-integrated’ womb of our group, where anything can be everything, the bird could be a wish for a father figure. It crossed my mind that if there was yearning for a father, there might be a fear that I, as a dominant mother, had swallowed him up. Eventually I said, ‘We all have the need for a present and constant father. Sometimes the absence of a father leaves us feeling lost and insecure’.

It then came to me that this vague sense of the longed-for father may also evoke anxiety and fear. He might be dangerous. If provoked, he could become aggressive. Not knowing him opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Perspectives on the Mysterious

In western psychology there are ample references to the mysterious dimension in human existence. In his article Civilization and its Discontent (1930), Freud relates to Rolland’s term ‘oceanic feeling’, describing it as one of timelessness in which the individual feels connected to something much larger than him or herself.

Winnicott (1952), in writing of the feminine element in the individual, said that it is this element which can lead us to a very primal sense of ‘being’. ‘Being’ is a ‘mysterious’ state which originates in the experience of fusion with the object, i.e., the baby and mother are one. When simply ‘being’, the infant does not mind whether it is fragmented or whole, whether it exists in his mother’s glance or inside its own body.

Such moments of simply ‘being’ occur during the life of a good therapy group and are considered highly important. It is interesting to look at these states in the group through the prism of the matrix. The matrix, which is invisible, is what creates that something in the group which is beyond the evident. It is a mysterious phenomenon. Its boundaries are loose. A myriad flow of thoughts and experiences are possible. The content of this flow can be both rational and irrational (Agazarian and Peters, 1981).

Bion wrote explicitly of mysticism in therapeutic settings (Bion, 1970) when referring to diffusion of the listening process. By this he meant that the psychotherapist needs to be able to tolerate the state of ‘not knowing’. In this context he used the term ‘faith’, suggesting that this non-rational, non-scientific position was the most desirable stance of the psychoanalyst, though he insisted his meaning must be distinguished from the religious meaning with which it is commonly invested.

Coltart (1992) discusses the importance of the psychotherapist’s freed-up attention. She examines the paradox between reliance on existing theories and knowledge and willingness to be open to the emergence of the unexpected. She reminds us that in our work there is a dimension that is beyond words and that there is mystery at the heart of every person and every therapy situation.

Kohut (1966) saw mysticism as engaging the developmental line of narcissism. Mysticism contributes to a transformation of the narcissistic elements of one’s personality, helping the individual move into a higher ethical state which he termed ‘cosmic narcissism’. When this is facilitated through empathic communication in the analytic relationship, a more highly developed way of experiencing the world can be achieved. It also enables the working through of early traumas.

The mode of experience which Kohut describes here is essential to group life, which rests on mutual empathy and help. Hearing about the lives of others, members develop the ability to experience their pain in its more universal (or cosmic) aspect. They become more creative and flashes of wisdom and humour often appear.

Halevi Spero’s (1996) description of ‘the mysterious personality’ has relevance to the mysterious dimension in therapy groups. Such a person has a strong need to evade comprehensibility, gaining satisfaction from being intentionally enigmatic, obscure and uncanny. Such people may appear in a therapy group and confuse other members and the leader with his mysterious ‘persona’. This can create a problem in a group, which is striving for openness.

But not necessarily, according to Schermer (2001). He argues that a tolerance for the mystical may be essential to the conducting of therapy groups. When there is room for such experiences, the person or group may undergo an alteration of consciousness and enter realms that appear different from ordinary sensory interaction with reality and the natural world. This has value for the individual and the group.

Discussion and Conclusion

The analytic group can be conceptualized as a group of individuals who share the common goal of achieving relief from suffering. As they move towards this aim there is a wide range of expression in the group discourse, and participants come to better understand themselves and achieve personal growth.

In the analytic group one can see the presence of three dimensions of human existence—the evident, the secretive and the mysterious. These dimensions are eternal and universal, appearing in all periods of human history and in cultures everywhere. For example, in Plato’s Discourses, written more than two thousand years ago, the existence of these dimensions in human existence is referred to. Regarding the structure of society, he writes of three classes: ‘workers’, who are the producers; ‘warriors’, who are the protectors; and ‘governors’, who are the philosopher kings. Each class reflects one of the three basic dimensions of human existence.

An example of their appearance in cultural productions is in the Hebrew saga Laish. It is the story a group of Jewish travellers trying to reach the holy city of Jerusalem. As the group pursues this goal, the evident, the secret and the mysterious dimensions make their appearance. On their journey there is an evolution of mutual dependence, unconscious conflicts and sub-groups. These increasingly blame each other when new obstacles arise along the way.

In modern psychological thought, we see an on-going interest in these dimensions of human existence. Group analytic investigators have looked at how they are reflected specifically in the analytic therapy group. Certain authors suggest the importance of identifying and relating to each of the dimensions so that members experience a relief from suffering and also the achievement of personal developmental goals.

A journey, analogous to that of the travellers in Laish, is made in the group space, where members learn to listen to each other with understanding and empathy. Through several clinical anecdotes I have shown how specific exchanges between members reflect the evident, the secretive and the mysterious. I try to show how viewing these exchanges through the prism of the three dimensions helps us to better understand how members expand their ways of negotiating with the world.