Commentary on Jacinta Kent: ‘The Dynamic Foundation: Harnessing Difference within the Matrix’

As Jacinta Kent observes in her cogent and multi-faceted article (Kent, 2019) on Foulkes’ understanding of the group matrix, we are experiencing rapid changes in our world which profoundly affect human relationships and, in particular, our analytic groups. Kent begins for us a dialogue on the impact of these manifold changes on groups and our understanding of them. She focuses in particular on globalization and the resulting dilemmas and differences that result from immigration and cyber-communication that link people from all parts of the globe together. Thus, our groups are subject to many influences, distinctions and issues that were absent or peripheral when Foulkes initiated group analysis and developed his concept of the group matrix. The question that Kent raises is whether Foulkes’ understanding of the group matrix is still viable in its original form today.

Her consideration of the matrix concept itself is rich and perceptive, doing justice to the creative juices that flowed in and through Foulkes rather than the formulaic, concretized way that it appears in much of the literature. The idea of the individual as a nodal point in the group matrix of communication, which many consider definitional, owes a debt to Goldstein’s (1934) model of nerve networks but leaves out the multiple levels of meaning that Foulkes’ writing reveals to us. Kent points out the feminine (and feminist?) significance of the term ‘matrix’ itself, which refers to the womb as a place where a human being grows and develops. She thus subtly challenges the patriarchal lineage in which group analysis was born. She considers the multiple meanings of the word ‘matrix’ in our culture, sometimes implying an array of variables, as in mathematics, sometimes referring to a network, as in communication theory, to a vessel or container, as in Jungian thought, and to a system that is different from and/or transcends the individual, as in living systems theory and ecology.

She then reminds us that Foulkes (1964) regarded the matrix to have several manifest levels: the individual, the social, the cultural, and the transpersonal/suprapersonal. Importantly for her subsequent arguments, the notion of the social unconscious that emerged in the social sciences in Foulkes’ time (The Frankfurt School, Adorno, Fromm, Elias, and many others) has been brought into sophisticated play by Hopper and Weinberg (2011, 2016) with respect to analytic groups. For Kent, the social unconscious, with its almost monolithic emphasis on ‘society’ (socio-economic realities and traumatic events), is a stepping stone to the more general consideration of biology and culture in group formation. This critique takes her to the central point: the nature of the ‘foundation matrix’, the most fundamental features of the human group given by our collective inheritance and cultural transmission.

The key question that Kent raises is whether the foundation matrix—which I would define as the basic characteristics that define a human group as such—is a stable unchanging reality of human existence or whether it undergoes dynamic and sometimes radical shifts in its form and structure, like tectonic plates that shift under the sea and land, erupting into our groups in conflicts and issues that cause tremors and quakes in the group interaction. The examples she gives are of sexuality and sexual abuse issues that erupt into intense conflict in groups. Because of the different social and cultural contexts and assumptions the members from diverse parts of the world bring to the group, previously hidden differences erupt into struggles to find common ground. If the common ground—the foundation matrix—is shaky, argues Kent, we can no longer assume a biological-cultural framework that underpins all group relations. So much is changing, so fast, in so many different ‘locations’ (a Foulkesian term) that we can no longer assume a universal foundation matrix but must regard it as ever-changing and capable of re-defining itself. The foundation matrix is dynamic not static.

The question here is whether, in her examples, it is the social matrix or the foundation matrix that is shaky. The fact that her group members do find mutual understanding by clarifying differences suggests that the foundation matrix is stable despite all the flux brought about by globalization and sociocultural diversity. The story of Helen Keller provides a vivid analogy. Born without vision and hearing and unable to utter a sound, the ordinary channels of human interaction were closed off to her. Yet just by touch and movement, she was able to connect with her teacher and join the human race. The ability to be human seems to transcend conditions, no matter how severe or disparate. (I would say it has to do with the ability to create mutual meanings.) I would argue that, although it resists definition, the foundation matrix is a constant that pervades all human groups.