Reflections on Writing as Part of a Group-Analytic Training
Michael Münchow, cand.phil., M.A., Institute of Group-Analysis, Copenhagen
Contribution to EGATIN Study-Days in Copenhagen, April 28th – 30th 2006.
To introduce this afternoon’s group discussion on reflections on writing as part of a group-analytic
training, I would like to share some thoughts about the written and spoken word as such and then
relate them somehow to group-analytic practice. This would hopefully, along with the other
introductory input, serve as points of departure for the groups discussions.
In reflecting on this afternoon’s theme, I shall continue in a way from last year’s EGATIN meeting
in Rome. Here Dr. Romolo Rossi (2005) invoked Plato’s dialogue Protagoras in order to emphasise
the connection between teaching and the group. The group, he argued, is a prime setting for creative
teaching. Plato’s dialogues, indeed, remain a fine example of this. Anyone who has grappled with a
platonic dialogue will know that such reading requires a communal commitment, a community of
readers. The dialogue, in turn, gives pleasure to be shared with others. And these very texts,
reporting alleged dialogues, show a concerted effort by a group of protagonists in common search
of truth. In antiquity, they were read out aloud and studied, probably in small groups, too.
Is it at all possible to write out the truth-seeking labour of a group? Or is a group engaged in
dialogue not already deeply immersed in the writing of its own story or history?
Certainly, each group that we encounter and participate in has its own idiom and its own voice, to a
certain extent. When we speak of the group’s history, there is also a sense of authorship, which is
shared and yet difficult to define. Who is the author of the group? Everyone and no one.
As a group establishes its own culture, it does so, in the analytic settings most familiar to us,
without much recourse to written statements. The distinct flavour and characteristics of the group
are preserved in an aura of unspoken mores or conventions framed by a set of boundaries. The
unwritten laws and conventions of the group tend only to surface when transgressed. Then the
transgressor, often the newcomer, has to face the music. The transgressor is at best exposed as being
‘not a good fit’, posing a potential unease and a threat to the community. Various forms of reprisals
may ensue. At worst, he or she may be subjected to recrimination and brutal correction. We could
ask, in our group-analytic context, whether the amount of unwritten laws concerning appropriate
conduct and propriety has anything to do with a seeming difficulty in integrating fresh arrivals into
a culture that may to strangers come across as a tightly knit, and slightly esoteric set. Certainly, the
group could not act in a punishing way unless there were a sense of an unspoken law text to which
it tacitly refers. Writing out and explaining the rules in advance, as a means of seeking transparency,
might help, but this would also be at the cost of losing the opacity and depth of a fertile ground
facilitating unique personal change and development.
The tension between the written and the spoken word lies at the heart of our group-analytic efforts
and has a long history both in psychoanalytic tradition and well beyond.
‘Talking cure!’ This dictum has served as a beacon for psychoanalytic practice. The living, spoken
word is emphasised, as the dead letter of writing is consigned to the margins of analytic discourse.
We only write when we have to.
‘Personal communication!’ Such a direct and unadulterated source echoes the voice of a master and
has a prominent place in our tradition. Thus Harold Behr and Liesel Hearst (2005) draw on insights
received from S.H. Foulkes. This is rightly so, and yet not without a sense of ambivalence. In his
book Dissemination, Jacques Derrida (1981), French philosopher and a subtle reader of Freud,
explores this ambivalence towards the written word as running right through Western JudaeoChristian tradition all the way back to Plato. In his dialogue Phaedrus, Plato calls writing both a
remedy and a poison when it comes to memory. We write things down in order to remember, but
also to allow us to forget. Just think of case notes, which will be a topic tomorrow. This double
quality of remembering and forgetting is encapsulated by Plato in a single, but ambiguous term:
‘pharmakon’. Remedy and poison, we recognise it in our ‘pharmacy’, where taking a drug and
doing drugs have very different values. And does this have a further dimension, when we think of
the somewhat trivial literary activity of writing out pre-scriptions (also here ‘scripting’ plays a role)?
Writing poses a challenge to the spoken word, in Greek the ‘logos’. And the logos also enjoys a
special position in the Christian tradition, particularly in the Gospel of St. John, where, ‘In the
beginning was the Word (logos)’, and where the practice and sayings of Jesus are distinguished
against the rigidity of the Pharisees and scribes (grammateis). This is what Derrida calls
logocentrism as enshrined within a metaphysics of presence. The spoken word is given priority
because of its sense of presence, whereas writing denotes absence, distance and postponement. Are
we caught in an idealisation of the present which makes us shy away from writing?
To return to Freud, his Interpretation of Dreams shows a distinct preoccupation with the dream as a
text, often couched in pictorial language. As Jacques Derrida (1978) notes in his essay, ’Freud and
the Scene of Writing’, this dream-text stands in need of translation (interestingly Freud here uses the
word Übertragung, later developed as ‘transference’). The Unconscious reveals itself as a form of
writing. Is there thus an original writing, an Urschrift, akin to hieroglyphic writing, which it is our
task as analysts to uncover? This concept points in the direction of an archaeological hermeneutic
practice. But translation work will necessarily lose subtleties, as we opt for clarity as against
undecidability. We know so well, when trying to translate jokes, that nuances get lost. How do we
preserve the richness of ambiguity: poison and remedy, drug and drugs. And there are further
examples: How do we today play ‘hosts’ without ‘hostility’? And even what is most familiar
remains in German somehow secret, as Freud explores in his essay ‘The Uncanny’ – ‘Das
Unheimliche’. You might finally like to know that in Danish ‘Are you married?’ may mean both
that, and ‘Are you poison?’ (‘gift’). It is usually the former sense that is intended.
All these contraries and considerations about writing are meant to open our ears and sharpen our
pencils when considering writing about group-analysis. Sigmund Karterud (1999), in his groundbreaking textbook on group-analysis, underscores the importance of writing and hermeneutics as
part and parcel group-analytic practice. Supervisees are indeed asked to bring notes for supervision,
which will then be treated akin to a dream-text! We are already deeply submerged in writing when
doing group-analysis. The question is just - how do we then write about it? And writing, we must
remember is not just documentation.
As recent appointments to the teaching faculty at the institute in Copenhagen, Tove Mathiesen and I
are initiating a study of the writing of papers during training. Together with our colleagues in
Copenhagen, we have noted that a considerable number of candidates do not submit their papers on
time and that some of them have been considered below the expected standard. A couple of initial
responses might set our reflection going.
One former trainee notes that writing was introduced far too late in the programme, which impaired
the gains from theory. The value of theory could be increased by giving written assignments earlier
on. Also new e-learning facilities could be used to generate written discussions and get the ball of
writing rolling, so to speak.
Another dimension noted was that the paper-writing coincided with termination of therapy and the
training programme as such. Writing does have a much more finite quality than speech and hence in
itself denotes ending, termination and ultimately death and dying. Trusting, however, a shared
concern for writing, these considerations may hopefully continue to generate a lively discussion
within EGATIN and well beyond!
References:
Behr, H. & Hearst, L. (2005) Group-Analytic Psychotherapy – A Meeting of Minds. London: Whurr.
Derrida, J. (1978) ‘Freud and the Scene of Writing’ in: Writing and Difference. London: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1981) ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ in: Dissemination. London: The Athlone Press.
Karterud, S. (1999) Gruppeanalyse og psykodynamisk gruppepsykoterapi. Oslo: Pax Forlag.
Rossi, R. (2005) Protagoras – Groups and surroundings. Unpublished lecture delivered at the
EGATIN Study Day in Rome, April 2005.