Adolescences: Adolescence Re-staged. The Interplay between Small Groups and the Large Group in a Group Analytic Training Situation

Conceptualization of the Interplay

Visualizing a group analytic training on Foulkesean terms, we see in each setting, large group, small group and the Altaussee setting on a vertical level all three matrices at work: foundation matrix, dynamic matrix and individual matrix (Behr et al., 1985; Roberts, 1982). These matrices pervade all specific settings of the block training situation. For a graphic illustration see (Foulkes, 1990: 261) and Nitzgen’s keen analysis of this illustration (Nitzgen, 2008a). The importance of the holistic concept of Foulkes has been recently emphasized by Nitzgen (2008b; 2009; 2010), deriving it from influences of Goldstein on Foulkes and also by Roseneil’s careful reassessment of the early Foulkes (Roseneil, 2013). The primary interest of this article however is the analysis of the horizontal processes.

For the conceptualization of the observed interplay between large and small group I want to refer primarily to Mario Erdheim’s ground-breaking ethno-psychoanalytic study unfortunately not yet translated into English: Die gesellschaftliche Produktion von Unbewußtheit. Eine Einführung in den ethnopsychoanalytischen Prozess (The Societal Production of Unconsciousness. An Introduction to the Ethnopsychoanalytical Process) (1982). Erdheim raises the issue of the interrelationship between cultural evolution and societal production of unconsciousness.

His chief concern is not a matter of the individual unconscious, but of the production of unconsciousness that is made supra-individually in collectives.

The process of cultural change has so far been seen under the aspects of the rising complexity of cognitive structures and its evolution, focusing on the evolution of consciousness. Erdheim, however, raises the question as to the significance of the unconscious for cultural evolution.

He analyses the process of social production of unconsciousness under the aspects of power and authority and attributes to adolescence a central role in the social process of cultural change. In carving out the pivotal role of adolescence in this process, Erdheim gains specific and unique profile in comparison to the group analytic discussion of the social unconscious (Hopper, 2001; 2006; 2007a; 2007b; Dalal, 2001; Weinberg, 2007; Roth et al., 2011).

I will focus on his observations on adolescence. Erdheim sees the crisis of adolescence as ‘the life-historical expression’ of the antagonistic relation between family and culture. The basic idea of the antagonism between the family unit and its surrounding culture was developed by Freud in Civilization and its Discontents (Freud, 1930a: 102; see also: Freud, 1909: 237). In his analysis of the relation between adolescence and cultural change, Erdheim concludes that adolescence is one of the requirements and a decisive factor for mankind shaping history, not only for passing on traditional institutions, but also for changing them. His observations are based on a specifically dynamic concept of culture, which is devolved from Freud. According to Erdheim, adolescence has a specific potential for bringing about cultural change (1982: XV).

This is based on Freud’s observation on the diphasic onset of psychosexual development. Erdheim explains this process:

The first surge of drives, which ends with the Oedipal phase, results in the assimilation to the stable and conservative family structure; the second one, which begins during puberty, results in the adaptation to the dynamic and expansive cultural structure. The former is mainly about the acquirement of predetermined circumstances. In the second assimilation process, however, innovative factors come to the fore. (Erdheim, 1982: 277)

Erdheim states that the surge of drives breaking through during puberty loosens the psychological structures that were previously established within the family, thereby creating the framework for a restructuring of one’s personality. This restructuring allows the individual to begin new experiences that go beyond the family setting. It is now possible to revise the solutions for the Oedipal conflict that were found during the latence period. By breaking up the psychological structures acquired within the family in early childhood, the individual is able to develop new forms of assimilation and culture that can no longer be attributed to the family.

Foulkes did realize this connection when he answered, during a seminar in Switzerland, the allegation of a young Bostonian analyst, who maintained that group analysis is fake, because it has no regression:

You’re right, but we do have transferences, we do go back in history as we relive our lives without recalling it . . . Let’s look at therapy as a forward-looking instrument . . . let’s take the adolescent. He really has a group of peers that pull him away from the resurgence of the Oedipal conflict and into the real world . . . releasing him from the bondage with his parents. (Ormont, 1999; 2008; Power; 2013)

Under the pressure of the antagonism between family and culture, Erdheim maintains, the individual is supposed to develop abilities of cultural and social adaptation. This antagonism is dialectical and ultimately not to be resolved: even after adolescence, it remains conflict-ridden, except that it takes on different forms. This leads to what Eissler had formulated as the ‘second chance’ of adolescence:

Adolescence appears to afford the individual a second chance; it is a kind of lease permitting revision of the solutions found during latency which had been formed in direct reaction to the Oedipal conflict. Some structure of the earlier personality seems to dissolve in the course of adolescence. Perhaps a comparison with a process of liquefaction is more appropriate. Regressive features are certain to appear, but I prefer to emphasize the release of forces that were bound in the structure and the ensuing reorganization through new identifications and the cathexis of new objects. (Eissler, 1958: 250)

Erdheim’s conceptualization of the antagonism between family and culture and of adolescence as a surge of decentration, shattering the ‘fixation’ within the family, opens up space for a new understanding of the group analytic ‘cross-border traffic’, i.e. the specific interaction between the large group and small groups.

My thesis is as follows:

The transference potential in a training block such as in Altaussee opens up space for an experience, which must be considered as a re-staging of adolescence. The interplay between the small groups and the large group reproduce the specific ‘cross-border traffic’, similar to the one between family and civilization in adolescence. The intended transgression of the small group by the large group ultimately simulates the transgression of the family by civilization. As a consequence, the participants are thrown back into a conflict very much akin to the adolescent process. Therefore, we are talking about a simulation of a primarily adolescent process: it is a re-staging of adolescence.

What are the arguments for this thesis?

By having the workshop begin and end with the large group, the small group is deliberately put into perspective. The intimacy of the small group is, right from the start, subjected to an irritation. From the very beginning, there is a surge of decentration, which emerges with the specific impact of the large group effect. At the same time, the afternoon off on Tuesday in the middle of the workshop provides opportunities for a more intensive ‘cross-border traffic’ in the Altaussee setting. The resulting effects that put into perspective the self-centred small groups correspond to the surge of adolescence. This creates space for a process of deferred action, which corresponds to the ‘second chance’ (Eissler, 1958) of adolescence. However, the space for experience beyond the small group that is created by the large group also gives rise to a specific phenomenon, namely that of ‘cross-border traffic’ between the various settings. The large group eo ipso causes a powerful decentration of the small group. If we assume the small group to be family-like in its constitutive intimacy, the large group must be seen as an analogy to civilization. Thus, the setting reflects the dynamics of an adolescent surge because the large group sessions have the same effect as decentration surges. The ‘cross-border traffic’, i.e. the continuous exchange between the large group and the small groups, corresponds to the antagonism between family and culture. The resulting dynamics can be understood as a re-staging of adolescence. Through Erdheim’s conceptualization of the adolescent crisis as an initial surge in the conflict-laden antagonism between family and civilization, we are able to gain essential insights into the cross border traffic between the large group and the small groups. With that in mind, the interactions I focus on, seem like attempts to cope with this antagonism, which, according to Erdheim, remains dialectical, it cannot be resolved. The training setting in Altaussee allows for a specific dynamic in using the available framework to break up rigid structures, to loosen and soften early childhood fixations in order to open up new space for experience.

Let us first take a look at the different settings:

By having a male and a female conductor, the small group offers transference potential to raise awareness of and to identify unconscious common relations and conflicts among the participants; it is thus comparable to the intimate family setting. In the process of regression, family-like patterns of conflict constitute the group’s setting. Conflicts among the participants have the characteristics of sibling rivalry and peer confrontation, and parental patterns of transference are repeatedly redirected towards the conductors. Thus, a specific, almost family-like intimacy develops.

The situation in the large group is entirely different: It evokes specific feelings of being powerless and feelings of helplessness. The dynamics of the large group as overpowering and threatening scenery with strong regressive effects and mobilization of early fears gives rise to massive insecurities in experiencing archaic destructiveness. (In the period I observed, the large group was led solely by one male conductor.) The large group offers insights into archaic object relations conflicts. At the same time, it provides an opportunity to encounter the unfamiliar, it is a chance to gain something new through civilization that the family was unable to provide. With its two conductors, male and female, we perceive the small group as a reflection of the family model. Things are entirely different where the conductor of the large group is concerned. Josef Shaked, who, in accordance with his concept, has been conducting the large group solely by himself for more than 30 years, is perceived differently by the participants of the large group: they see him as both a caring mother and a protective father, androgynous, maybe even genderless, more like the totem of a clan or a monotheistic god. This is also one of the factors that result in a movement away from the family and towards civilization.

And last but not least, there is the Altaussee setting: the village alone is love at first—and second—sight, nestled on the shores of the lake between the mountain peaks Loser and Trisselwand, the white Dachstein glacier looming in the distance. By the way, the village has a problematic cultural matrix, as it has a history not worked through of being a stronghold in the alpine redoubt, where a group of almost 100 high ranking SS architects of the Holocaust were hiding away in the last months of the war, including Adolf Eichmann and Ernst Kaltenbrunner and where more than 5000 stolen works of art were secured in the Altaussee salt mine in preparation for a planned ‘Führermuseum’. The Altaussee setting provides different arenas: cafés and traditional restaurants where the participants can spend time together at lunch or in the evenings, the lake with its circular route, the afternoon off on Tuesday and the disco on Tuesday night, which is organized by the participants themselves. The Altaussee setting should be considered as a ‘real life’ practice field for acting out inner processes and group experiences, since it is a space where participants of different small groups can get in touch and meet one another outside the analytic group processes.

Belonging to a setting constitutes a specific identity. The borders in each setting are a somewhat determining force and have a powerful influence. Several questions arise: Where do I belong? Who am I? This, of course, also brings up the problem of ‘cross-border traffic’ with other groups. Can something from the current setting be taken along into another one? As we can easily understand, this is primarily a one-way difficulty as bringing up material from the large group in a small group is never a risk of violating an intimacy or revealing a secret. If an individual is bound more strongly to the family context, will she cling to the small group? Will she only sit with her small group in the restaurant when they go out in the evenings in the Altaussee setting? This is exactly the crucial problem of adolescence. For one question arises anew in this phase of psychosexual development: Where do I belong? The existence of the large group and the other small groups in the training situation, make it possible to learn about events in other small groups and also about their conductors and their style of conducting. As a result, a continuous process of decentration is maintained. The challenge of adolescence also includes the task of learning to speak outside the family idiom. Can one also speak up and act one’s part in peer groups? Cohesive families strictly abide by their rules, thereby trying to impede or forestall this process of decentration. This especially applies to severely disturbed families. Anyone who works with heavily traumatized adolescents—as I do—will observe time and time again how difficult it is for them to seize the opportunity for emancipatory experiences. It is as if their detrimental environment put them in specific chains not to be broken—not even by seeking new ones and ending up in prison. By entering the larger setting, one learns that there are also other standards. However, crossing into the larger social context can only be achieved by those who are capable of developing a decentred identity. In the Altaussee training situation, this other setting corresponds to the large group and also to the Altaussee setting. It is a question of trying out one’s flexibility. Can one share what is happening at home in another setting or is that a betrayal? Being adamantly self-referential is fateful. For if one cannot be on the move into another setting, the experiences that one undergoes in the own family can only be perceived as a fate imposed forever. In such a case, there is no room for advancement, criticism or modification. What is so brilliant about the group analytic setting in Altaussee is that the mix of different interlaced settings (large group, small group, Altaussee setting) repeatedly questions the border and results in necessary ‘cross-border’ traffic. This oscillation results in a dialectics of liberation and obstruction, of holding on and release and this is continuously worked through. Simultaneously, the afternoon off on Tuesday provides an opportunity to try out this adolescent ‘cross-border traffic’. During the nine days of activities in Altaussee, one is constantly confronted with crossing the border. It is a matter of decentring the own ‘family’ and seizing the opportunity of emancipation while, at the same time, mastering the challenge of not losing oneself in the larger setting. Where, however, these boarders are rigid and one cannot risk the comparison with other families/small groups, one remains bound by the sense of tact, it will not be possible to talk about one’s parents and one cannot escape the borders of the family/small group. By beginning the workshop with the large group in Altaussee, which corresponds to civilization, the ‘family’ is relativized in advance. But there is more to it than that. Civilization develops in conflict with the strange and unknown. The large group’s focus on the unknown opens up a chance for the emergence of something new. As one might say, the Altaussee setting simulates processes of civilization, which in turn also results in a re-staging of the adolescent conflict.

Consequences for the Conductor’s Group Analytic Interpretation

What are the consequences of these reflections for a group analytical technique of interpretation?

If it is true that, by means of Erdheim’s conceptualization we can now describe the interactions between the large group and the small groups as a re-staging of adolescence, this would also have significant consequences for the technique of interpretation. The central role of the ‘cross-border traffic’ must hence be of importance for interpretation processes in such an interlaced setting.

Foulkes was of the opinion that in group analysis eo ipso, a decentration of the conductor takes place because interpretational sovereignty does not lie with the conductor alone. He conceptualizes an interpretative culture, which is developed by the entire group, not only by the conductor (Foulkes, 1975; 1990: 293; Haubl, 1998; Nitzgen, 2001: 344). The conductor’s function in Foulkes’ concept is to encourage the group’s self-organization. (Haubl, 1998: 116).

Paying no attention to the phenomena described in this article bears the risk that, by concentrating solely on the process within the group, conductors are tempted to consider ‘their’ group as an Isle of the Blessed so that they, by doing so, become a victim of the family’s ideology and over-estimation—as if they had no part in the process of decentration. If a conductor focuses too much on the processes of his group, and does not notice those of the ‘cross-border traffic’ as well, he will not be able to interpret certain unconscious conflicts that have to do with ‘cross-border traffic’. However, it is just in these cross-border situations that significant processes take place. The interpretation of the relativization of one’s own group during the whole workshop process requires some kind of non-narcissistic depot, which unfortunately not every conductor can equally fall back upon. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is absolutely necessary to include the perspective of the adolescent process in the technique of interpretation, playing the cards of a ‘second chance’. If my theory is consistent, it would be necessary to focus in interpretation more on the processes of disengagement. Hence, it is about raising awareness of the decentration of the small group. That would be a task to be fulfilled by the large group. However, every decentration process implies detachment, and that is what is so difficult about it and may become a problem for a small groups’ conductor: for detachment is no one-sided process.

Erdheim (1988) introduced the concept of ‘imago’ to describe the decisive images of family and civilization, which influence the detachment process in adolescence. According to him, the imago of the family develops out of the mother representation and the imago of the culture out of the father representation. In Erdheim’s view, these imagines are ‘organizers of experience’, comparable to mother and father representations in childhood.

Haubl strongly emphasized the importance of culture imagines for group analysis (Haubl, 1994: 5), i.e. there is also a group analytic culture imago that ‘transports the theoretical group concept’. In this way, Foulkes oriented his group analytic conceptualization according to the imago of a democratic culture (Nitzgen, 2001).

Erdheim adds another dimension to this conflict by stating that the process of detachment from the family is never ending and antagonistic, there is always the other side to it, back from civilization to family. We then must also speak of resistance in the opposite sense when someone is looking for the good things only outside the family and gets lost in civilization trends and tendencies without having any sort of family-like attachment.

The necessity to free oneself from family structures, from the ‘safety of the familiar’ (Erdheim, 1982: XV), and to turn to civilization during the adolescent crisis makes sense. But where in this antagonism lies the necessity to return to the family? Why is it necessary, if the departure into and the integration in the culture have been successful? What would we miss if we left our family or a family-like environment of intimacy behind forever?

This second dimension is complementary to the detachment process from family: returning from culture or civilization to the intimacy of one’s own family or family-like structure, to a microcosm of intimacy, which is no longer characterized by rigid borders. It is about finding a new place in familiar surroundings after having gone one’s way in the far realms of civilization. What is it like to return from the outside, from civilization, to a family context? Beautiful and with metallic precision poetry has found words for this experience.

Simplicity

For Haydée Lange

The garden gate is opened

as easily as a turned page

questioned by a regular devotion

and once inside, our gazes

have no need to fix on objects

that already exist completely in memory.

I am familiar with the customs and the souls

and that dialectic of allusions

which any gathering of humans weaves.

I need not speak

nor claim false privileges;

those who surround me here know me well,

know well my afflictions and my weakness.

That is to attain the highest thing,

what will perhaps be given us by Heaven:

not veneration or victories,

but simply to be accepted

as part of an undeniable Reality,

like stones and trees. (Translation by Stephen Kessler (Jorge Luis Borges, 2000: 27)

Here, we find what the family can offer after a process of disengagement: an offer of comfort and safety which allows swinging back and forth. The family provides something that cannot be found in civilization, an established, special grown intimacy which is a given and where one has access to without having to put in societal performance. Something very important is taking place: Successes and defeats in civilization are put into perspective; they do not matter in this context.

It is this kind of relativization that is of interest, it is complementary to the decentration of the family in the antagonism between family and civilization. Beyond socio-cultural processes exists another place that one has access and can return to. This describes an opposite route or a swinging from socialisation back to familiarization.

In some of his more recent works, Erdheim (1993; 2002) further developed his approach and attempted to describe the psychoanalytic process itself essentially from the viewpoint of the adolescent deferred action, by comparing the changes of significant structures in psychoanalysis to the change processes of adolescence. According to Erdheim, some kind of revival of the adolescent process happens in psychoanalysis. The loosening of early childhood fixations during the psychoanalytic process and the breaking up of frozen structures can be seen in analogy to thawing tendencies during the adolescent crisis. It is an opportunity that opens up thanks to deferred action and makes such a process possible. This, according to Erdheim, sheds a new light on the concept of neurosis: not only as an early stage fixation due to unresolved unconscious conflicts in early childhood but also as the result of a failure of the adolescent processes. During adolescence it was not possible to loosen up childhood fixations. Compulsive repetition corresponds to the frozen structures; it had not been possible to make use of the ‘second chance’ in adolescence to thaw frozen structures.

Summing up: Opportunities for transference in a setting as in Altaussee open up possibilities for experiences that can be understood as a re-staging of adolescence. The interplay between the large group and small groups represent cross-border situations similar to those of family and civilization. By simulating civilization, the participants are thrown back onto the adolescent conflict. Thus, it is about reproducing an adolescent process, about the re-staging of adolescence. As a consequence, processes of deferred action that correspond to the ‘second chance’ are made possible.

This conceptualization helps us to better understand interesting phenomena of interplay between the three settings, the large group and the small groups and the Altaussee setting.

The consequences for the technique of interpretation: The consideration of the central role of ‘cross-border traffic’ in such interplay should have an effect on interpretation techniques that reflects the dimension of the ‘second chance’. Moreover, the decentration of the small group and its conductors should not disappear from view.

A training situation also mirrors our hope for change. Is it not true that we search for the personal growth potential within us? Do we not strive for breaking up rigid, fixed structures in the hope that segments of adolescence may be revived? Following Erwin Panofsky (1960), who opened up a new perspective on the Italian Renaissance in art history by extending the isolated, apparently unique phenomenon of referring to antiquity in the Italian Renaissance to the constant reproduction of such recourses to antiquity at other times and who described this as ‘Renaissance and Renascences’, I would suggest to talk of adolescence and adolescences. An interesting remark by Winnicott points in the same direction:

. . . and if we are talking about adolescence we are talking about adults because no adults are all the time adult. This is because people are not just their own age, they are to some extent every age, or no age. (Winnicott, 1960; 1990: 137)

It is about the possibility of reviving adolescent processes initiated by dramatic experiences in life, which include analytic processes, when we succeed in making unconscious conflicts conscious. This makes it more comprehensible why participating in group analytic training has become a life changing experience for many participants. After all, that is exactly what we, who work in group analysis, wish for as a gratification of our own inner efforts and self-confrontations. We hope—which may not be entirely unfounded—that what Goethe had reserved for real genius—of course, he already knew—might eventually be said about us:

They experience a repeated adolescence, while others are young only once. (Eckermann, 1999: 656). ²