Abstract
In the week that I was invited to write a response to this interesting article, I had read a review in the New York Review of Books (Vol LXIII Number 16, p. 472) of a book The Good Book of Human Nature: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible (2016). The review was not a kind one; it sounded as though the book was far less well researched than other more arresting evolutionary interpretations. Bowerstock writes ‘We are asked to believe that this text, assembled from writings that spanned the first millennium BC and first century AD reflect the long evolution of the human species from the epoch of the hunter-gatherers “13,000 years ago”. The conclusions do not matter for our purposes; I am not well-informed enough to have even the most tentative opinion regarding the accuracy or otherwise of these statements in regard to the Old Testament, but I want to draw to your notice the fact that the authors of this book are as impressed by the significance of the contribution made by our primitive ancestors to our current sociological/theological thinking as is the author of this article. And that the reviewer did not question.
Possibly in this deracinated, commodified world of ours we feel we need to look back to a simpler time. Speaking as a group analyst, I find it refreshing to come across an article which is less concerned with how many unconscious interpersonal projections can dance on the head of a borderline personality disorder and chooses to focus on the real strengths of our slightly weird discipline. The author says himself that he is looking for the ‘inner continuities’ and does so in a persuasively speculative account of the origins of our felt need to cluster together in the dark and ceaselessly search for emotional warmth.
The author quotes Leakey: ‘Just as the principle of profit and rationality is central to the capitalist ethic, so is sharing to the conduct of social life in foraging societies’ (2017: 98) He invites the reader to ‘provide your own emphasis for what this means for group analysis’.
In the same week that I was thinking about this response, Richard Adams, the author of the amazingly brilliant book Watership Down (1972) (and please do not go near the film or the terrible song) died. It has long formed the basis for many of my favourite morality tales and I had only to read the phrase ‘foraging societies’ for that brave little band of rabbits to hop into my mind.
I say ‘band’ but I should more properly say ‘group’ for never has interdependent group activity been more persuasively or vividly described. All the issues to which we are accustomed are illustrated, every rabbit has a strength or a talent to offer, every rabbit at some stage is in desperate need of help from his companions, every rabbit at times has to struggle to make his voice heard; there are violent quarrels, serious conflicts but the group holds together. In this free associative exercise of mine, the story that came to mind most vividly was one of the best known: it is the story of Cowslip’s Warren in Part 1, Chapter 13 and it is called ‘Hospitality’.
This is a telling account of what happens when rabbits (for the purpose of my argument, the hunter–gatherers) forsake their communal goals of food for all, shelter for all, care for all and allow themselves, for the sake of ease and comfort, to accept food and shelter within a man-made warren. The price they pay is to accept also that some of them will die in the snares that are laid within the field where their food is placed. The rule is that this is never referred to. They do not search for missing rabbits; they do not mourn. They have learned that to make the system work, they do not make a fuss. And, most importantly, they never talk about it. So, they do not tell stories about their own history or mention rabbits from the past. As such they have learned to conform to a norm of survival which deprives them of all essential ‘rabbitness’; and as an aspect of that they have forfeited any sense of a shared ancestry and a shared community.
The author of this article discusses the origin of language as an essential element in sharing. He pictures his group of hunter–gatherers around the fire, sharing accounts of what has happened. Personal narratives are certainly an essential part of group analysis; but equally important and symbiotically linked is the story of the group. How it began, where it began, whether it moved, whether it changed in some way, who were the members, what has happened to them, who is here now and when will they leave? And the group narrative is an important part of each individual member’s story.
In his weekly Guardian column Giles Fraser (2016) recently referred to the story of Cowslip’s Warren as an example of what happens, morally, to a community when a sense of cohesion breaks down.
‘They have become a loose collection of individuals, concerned principally with their own individual rights and freedoms, but without a shared story that might bind them to each other.’
This is my response to the earlier Leakey quote. When a group or a society or a community forgets how to share stories and concern for each other then morally they are at risk.
So, what about the hunter–gatherers? It is important that the author has bothered to tell their story and to remind us of what we know about them and in what ways their needs are our needs, their fears our fears and how we have been changed and not changed by our responses to those.
If I ask myself what my overarching response to this article is I would say that I am grateful to the author for reminding us as group analysts of our origins. I feel about all research into our hunter–gatherer origins, the way I feel about the Just So Stories which, as you will know, were written by Rudyard Kipling for his daughter. I am sure you are familiar with How the Elephant got his Trunk, How the Leopard got his Spots and so on. The point about these stories is that they are not ‘true’ in the sense of being accurate; they make no attempt to be factual while nonetheless managing to capture something essentially truthful about the animals concerned. They are good examples of the fact that at times fiction can reveal truths which facts cannot access. Does this story about the Primordial Origins of Group Analysis tell us how group analysis got its matrix? However confident one may or may not be about the accuracy of the facts of the case, I do not believe the details matter much. This story captures something essential which anyone of any sensibility who has ever been a member of a group analytic group will know; that in our shared space, in our shared eye contact, in our shared stories and tears and laughter is something essentially human and as old as the hills, or at least, as old as the hunter–gatherers.
The author points out that ‘The value of group-analysis is that it takes us away from hierarchical and authoritative structures . . .’ (2017: 100). This sentence brings to my mind the words in Foulkes Therapeutic Group Analysis where he writes in the chapter Concerning Leadership, of the conductor: He loves and respects the group and his aim is to make its members self-responsible individuals. He wants to replace submission by co-operation on equal terms between equals . . . When all is said, there will remain a nucleus, not at present further reducible by science, more nearly expressed perhaps by art and religion, bound up with his own personality, a primary rapport based on love, respect and faith. Without these, he cannot awaken nor bind the spell of what the poet called ‘the old enchantment’ (1964: 65)
A bit of a dream for some, perhaps, but a worthwhile dream nonetheless.