Abstract
Luiker (2021) wants to allow for ‘an opportunity to cognitively step out of, and recognize, the operation of primitive syntonic, unconscious group defences’ (Luiker, 2021:106) in group analysis. He considers group analysis a religion, which opposes science and research. The group-analytic figure chosen to personify group analysis as a religion is not more and not less than Pat de Maré, one of the group-analytic movement leaders. For Luiker, Pat is the ‘Old Testament prophet’, which group analysts all seem to need to lead them and contain their frustration 1 . Choosing de Maré over Foulkes, who was the central creator of group analysis, is difficult to explain. Is Luiker attached to the former for some reason? Luiker also does not explain why he is keen to criticize the group analytic way of conducting large groups. It looks unclear, because as much as some of us are busy with large and median groups, the clear centre of group analysis for me is the small therapy group.
Some of Luiker’s strongest criticism of de Maré is the quality of Pat’s relations with his colleagues. He stands against the love relations group analysts maintain with Pat de Maré: ‘I think the quality of this protective, generous, affectionate relationship between de Maré’s ideas and group analysis is worth examining. It appears to be a fond, familial kind of idealization which precludes intellectual engagement’ (Luiker, 2021: 102). Again interesting for me is the idea that the relation is with ‘de Maré’s ideas’ and not his person.
Then his centrality in the large groups practice is criticized by Luiker. ‘It is as if de Maré represents the final word on the subject’. The group-analytic perspective in general is criticized as being full of misunderstandings, contradictions and an anti-science stance, and Pat’s writing is especially criticized for being a poorly written ‘obscurantist text’. ‘The term obscurantism is generally regarded as deliberate forestalling of inquiry and understanding, or deliberate abstruseness of style’ (Luiker, 2021: 89). Could it be that we also are all guilty of obscurantism in our writing?
As a clinician, I am actually happy that someone invests in criticizing the group analytic system, because it evokes thinking. Reflection seems to me an important challenge to our approach to group-analytic therapy and applications. I leave it to others (e.g. Blackwell, Dalal, etc.) to provide critique of scientific evidence itself, or to provide for justifications of non-empirical clinical approaches.
Personally, I welcome the opportunity to reflect on my practice and especially because of my identification with Pat de Maré and his ideas. I find myself busy not only with small groups, but also extensively with large and median groups. The personification of Pat de Maré as the carrier of religion and opposition of science seems to me highly interesting. Was Pat religious in his leadership or as I am trying to put it: did the relationship between Pat, the leader and his followers, have ‘religious potential’? This feeling certainly emerged in me when I participated in a conference on Pat de Maré’s work in Bolzano some years ago. What struck me there, amidst the beautiful Tirolian mountains, was the lack of any criticism of Pat de Maré’s work. More than a few participants in the conference took pride in the fact that they had been participating in a monthly reading group for more than 20 years, where they only discussed Pat de Maré’s writings. I was not alone in my astonishment. More than de Maré’s person and the contents of his legacy, the quality of the co-created reciprocal relationship with those who were reading his papers exclusively was difficult to understand. Maybe Luiker understood the meaning of Pat’s monopoly of ideas as a religious potential.
Luiker admits his wish to look
at the relationship between de Maré and the religious group of which he is a leader. I make the argument that the culture of group analysis is a primitive, syntonic, unconscious group defence against the advance of science into the domain of human relations. (Luiker, 2021: 101)
I ask: How would this advance of science look like? Luiker’s curiosity started with some envy of such relations; he then went on to the understanding that the problem is not only being a believer in a religion, but the practice of a curing profession under magic directions and religious potential.
But if group analysis would be a religion . . . so what? What differentiates science and religion is not the attachment to leaders, or transference in general, but the ability to refute false hypothesis. Religion believes in ‘given’ truth, it is a ‘foundation matrix’ (Foulkes and Anthony, 1965)) whereas science has to succeed to replicate results or refuting hypothesis.
Why is it really so important to be scientific about therapeutic or social informative and transformative communication, as it exists in group processes? Especially when research in the interpersonal and transpersonal space is so difficult although not impossible with today’s qualitative research (Doron, 2019). Also because research seems not interesting enough, we may lovingly accept that the ‘scientific potential’ in small, median and large groups, as well as in the complicated, unspoken and vastly unconscious group processes will not be satisfactory. For example, science and the conducting of the large group would possibly contradict much of the significant experience we have in such a setting.
Luiker (2017) advocates that science (statistics) maintains that heart stents are not significantly more beneficial on a heart problem than without surgery. Thus, we should not use stents or it does not matter. What to do with our personal experience? Is it religiosity to keep trusting in stents because the 20 stent holders I met in the last three years unequivocally reported a significant improvement in their functioning and in their feelings after stent-surgery? This seems to be solipsistic and politically incorrect.
I take it that religion has to do with the containment of anxieties and love. As Luiker himself states, science also deals with the same aspects. Science, as religion, does not always enjoy freedom from magical thinking or enactment of irrational group behaviour. Scientists, as Kuhn (1962) is cited in Luiker (2021) stating that scientists do not always recognize the accumulation of evidence. Both science and religion have to do with the containment and holding of existential anxieties (James, 1984). And probably also of some glory.
Transferring the notion that Pat de Maré as a ‘leading group analyst’ and an ‘Old Testament prophet’ contains frustrations and anxieties, to social and political leadership with religious potential in the present COVID-19 situation. In this last year containment has been done through transferential relationships. Is it the religion waiting for the science? While I hope the readers of this response will already live in a post-epidemic situation, right now, existential anxieties, traumatic situations and even some hopes for glory permeate the ‘Corona-matrix’ (Friedman, 2020) meaning this specific society in many countries. And similarly to how Luiker describes de Maré’s ‘divine’ position, for more than half a year now, political and religious figures are holding and containing such threats and excitements in prime time. And I am quite sure that after science will have solved the viral problem, leadership with religious potential will return to exert holding and containment to members of communities.
Luiker ridicules de Maré’s views on causality as simplistic, up to the point of caricature. But the most powerful piece of critique produced by Luiker is taken from the report of an on-going large group in ‘Koinonia’ (de Maré et al., 1991: 189-250). The report gives evidence to de Maré’s approach to the group as a whole translated into interventions. Luiker cites: ‘My first impression is that the conductors do not seem very interested in group processes. They focus mainly on individuals and dyads’ (Luiker, 2021: 90). After I reread this interesting report of a larger group (actually a median) I am worried myself that I have never really critically read it like Luiker shows. Pat actually seems to conduct a ‘large small group’ rather than a ‘small large group’. While only a few of his interventions were directed to the group as a whole, I hope the reason for my denial of Pat’s over-personal approach view is that the report seems very partial and short. De Maré’s as well as his co-conductor Robin Piper’s interventions, are rarely described in detail. But I fear that my denial has also to do with my relation to Pat de Maré’s religious potential.
I would invite colleagues who have been participating in this group to share their memories and views of de Maré’s interventions. Did the large group conductors consider individuals as being voices of the social conscious and unconscious processes at all? It looks important to me to give a place for these questions to arise, and then the ability to review and reflect on our positions.
Admiring Pat de Maré’s and ‘blind’ adoption of his views certainly has a religious potential, as has too much trust in group analysis in general. New concepts are still introduced and the canon is not extreme. Could we look also at the religious potential as something which has positive aspects?
Luiker’s critique of de Maré’s ‘frequent departures from his own principles’ may actually attest to de Maré’s ability to reflect and change. Religious, fixed views never change. De Maré is also an optimistic leader, and this aspect was not mentioned by Luiker. As a clinician, as long as I have someone to challenge my beliefs, I do not have to be a scientist as I do not want to give up all my beliefs, which have a ‘religious’ potential. Therapy needs many elements of religious potential, like holding hope and faith for our patients. Conductors of small group-analytic groups are called to ‘trust the group’. Although in my own professional life ‘trust the group’ was the result of the accumulation of experience after participating and conducting groups, I urge group analysts to find out if trusting the group’s process is experience-near or rather indoctrination. In the end is it possibly that group analysts are closer to potentially religious positions than to scientific paradigms?
I prefer a dialogue between scientific and religious potential, rather than a black and white judgement. Rejecting religious potential and the idealization of science will make it difficult for therapy and ‘trusting groups’. Understanding the relations between religious or scientific potentials seems more humane to me. Responding to challenging critique with a reflective stance ready to investigate both potentials will promote Koinonia.