Last week I told you I was heading into a group training for the weekend. It was fantastic—very rigorous. I’m sitting with a lot, because it was long and demanding, and I haven’t had any time off yet to let anything really sink in. The group is rooted, in part, in Modern Analytic theory. One of the key aspects of this method is to translate feelings and thoughts into words, and to vocalize them in the group, in real time.
The leader encourages the group members to be curious about and receptive to any thought or feeling, regardless of how “wrong,” transgressive,” or “rebellious” it is. I found it really difficult to not only feel something, but identify it, figure it out enough to put it into words, and then get past my own prohibitions to actually say it out loud.
One of the principles of this method is to voice thoughts and feelings, rather than act on them, impulsively or unconsciously. It creates the possibility of a gap, an interruption, between a strong emotion and an action. So me being me, I immediately started to wonder how this practice might work to stop or prevent not only interpersonal but also structural violence.
One thing Modern Analytic theory hasn’t talked a lot about is structural violence and oppression. The thoughts and feelings and projections that groups evoke and process are understood, largely, to be related to how we became a person in our families, in our lived experiences, and how we keep re-enacting those past experiences in the present moment.
There appears to be less practice in the field in helping people talk about the ways those experiences are also, at the same time, shot through with ideologies, with the impacts of structural and historical violence, with internalized oppression that stems from our being out of step with the dominant culture’s picture of what a “good” or “valuable” human being looks like, sounds like, what status they have, how much power they wield, etc.
I’ve been wondering: What would it be like to take this analytic group practice and use it to analyze feelings and thoughts in the context of structural violence and ideologies of domination like patriarchy and white supremacy?
I’ll give you an example of what I’m imagining as I ask this question. Picture a group of cops, sitting in a circle in an analytic process group.
In the process group, the cops have a chance to look at how they’ve both individually and collectively absorbed and re-enacted this ideology, and the ways in which policing is rooted in the history of enslavement in the United States.
Then the facilitator of the group—ideally also a cop—helps the cops begin to name the ways their feelings and projections onto “criminals” and “people who look suspicious” and “people who look upstanding” are rooted in this larger structure. The participants use the group to explore how their perceptions of others are influenced not just by their own personal histories, but also by these larger structures.
To be clear, I’m not talking about naming unconscious bias in the individual cop. I’m talking about using the group as a hive mind to explore ideologies, and a space of radical acceptance for all the feelings, all the projections of the group’s members. The purpose of the group is not so much to create insight into the emotional process of any individual member, but rather to employ the root concept in Modern Analytic theory– that to name and process feelings and projections in words can prevent unconscious or impulsive actions that harm.
The question becomes: could the group’s collaboration in “making conscious” these categories of identity help them not only process the shame and rage and hatred and longing and terror that they feel every day on the job, but also could it help them become conscious of these feelings as they arise and shape their behavior on the street and in court? Could they get better and better at seeing these projections and feelings in real time? Could they, instead of blocking this awareness out of shame or self loathing, use it to help them slow down, help them stop their own and their collective brutality?
And if this model worked, could it be used in other contexts, like Fortune 500 companies, or Hollywood, to help executives recognize their internalized patriarchal views of women as objects onto which to project and enact sexual violence?
