Group Therapy

Reflections on the Challenge

When you encounter an official statement that feels inauthentic, hold your nose, and inwardly rephrase a true version.

• Experiences

  T said the challenge had presented itself almost daily. The incident that struck her most was hearing the Prime Minister extol England’s breakfasts and pubs while presiding over their decline through taxation and closures. She instinctively held her nose, inwardly rephrasing a truer version that would never have been spoken publicly. Later, recalling the imprisonment of a woman for an impulsive tweet and contrasting it with leniency in other cases, she again felt the need to restrain her thoughts — aware that even honesty might risk censure.

  L noted several occasions to practise the challenge. Hearing the Prime Minister declare, “We will never surrender our flag,” he inwardly rephrased it as an admission of regret over leaving the EU. The same day, an email from a software company announced “new payment plans to better serve your needs,” which he translated as a blunt demand for higher fees to retain essential features. Later, watching Sir Geoffrey Hinton warn that AI would destroy the world, he again held his nose, reimagining the lament as something more personal — perhaps resentment that ChatGPT had disrupted his relationship.

• Responses

  L, replying to T, said that a “white lie” may spring from kindness, and thus not "smell", yet in politics the same impulse can become deliberate deceit. There was a spectrum of lying, which stretched to lying to oneself — when identification replaces the inner observer, and inauthenticity becomes habitual.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 33

• Passage

  And thanks to this, day by day, instead of improving the conditions for a speedy realization of the aim which has been set as a basis for my dear Fatherland, there only increases among the separate members of our Trusteeship all kinds of misunderstandings, personal considerations, gossip, intrigue, plots, and so on and so forth.

  During recent times I have thought and consulted much to find some way out of this sorrowful situation, until I nearly fell ill and was compelled to go to Egypt for rest. But alas, even there my black thoughts give me no peace, for my present spiritual unbalance leaves me no rest.

• Discussion

  J said the passage evoked the United Nations of today, where noble aims are undermined by factional tension and rivalry. L agreed, going further by suggesting the Governor’s plight was inevitable, as human actions must diverge from their intention over time. T linked this to the modern political scene, where leaders must juggle party loyalties, public opinion, and international pressures. True authenticity, she felt, became almost impossible when intellect and feeling were divided; only great emotional intelligence could sustain integrity of speech.

• Passage

  Further I said to him: ‘At the present time I have but one aim, namely, specifically to clear up for myself all the details of the manifestations of the human psyche of individuals existing separately as well as in groups. Well now, for the elucidation of the state and manifestations of the psyche of large groups, Russia would perhaps be very suitable for me ...

• Discussion

  J remarked that the scene moved from abstract theory to a practical problem — how insight can be translated into action. It showed, he said, the moment when ideas begin to take form in life.

  L built on this, distinguishing individual from collective work. The Trusteeship, he said, represented an early attempt at group therapy: to cure not one man but a whole social organism.

  T was struck by the phrase “individuals existing separately as well as in groups.” She recalled the powerful emotion of walking in a mass demonstration and how easily personal awareness dissolves in collective energy.

  L referred to Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power, noting that such collective forces often reverse their own intentions. High ideals, he said, become ironic in their outcome — movements drift from their original purpose.

  J agreed, calling irony itself a mark of cosmic law: every generation’s conviction becomes the next generation’s error.

• Passage

  I began, however, during that time, to go about everywhere as is usual for me, and to frequent the beings of this city, belonging to various what are called there ‘classes,’ in order to become acquainted with the characteristic particularities of their manners and customs.

  Well, it was then that I constated, among other things, that in the presences of the beings belonging to just this contemporary community, their, as it is called, ‘Ego-Individuality’ began during the recent centuries to form itself particularly sharply dual.

  After I had constated this and began specially to investigate this question there, I finally elucidated that this dual individuality obtained in their common presences, chiefly owing to a noncorrespondence between what is called the ‘tempo-of-the-place-of-their-arising-and-existence’ and the ‘form-of-their-being-mentation.’

• Discussion

  T found the phrase “dual individuality” striking, saying it described the same inner split the group had been exploring all evening.

  N linked it to ordinary experience: every person, he said, lives between the outer tempo of events and the inner pace of understanding. When these move at different speeds, imbalance and confusion appear.

  L reflected that this non-correspondence might now be greater than ever. Inner change, he said, is slow and almost timeless, while the world’s tempo races ahead — communication that once took weeks now occurs in seconds. The Governor’s “illness,” he suggested, could symbolise the strain of that acceleration.

  T agreed that the passage touched the core of modern disquiet: our outer circumstances demand immediacy while feeling and thought lag behind.

  N added that Gurdjieff’s insight was both psychological and cosmic — he grasped that the tempo of a place shapes consciousness. A mismatch between the two produces the divided self Beelzebub describes.