{"id":51572,"date":"2014-11-05T16:15:37","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T21:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=51572"},"modified":"2014-11-08T15:13:05","modified_gmt":"2014-11-08T20:13:05","slug":"no-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/11\/05\/no-wizard\/","title":{"rendered":"no wizard…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m aware that an argument broke out in the comments that stepped outside the little box above the comments section – went interpersonal. It has happened before, which why that box says what it says. The first time, the circumstances were unusual. It was someone in town who discovered I had a blog and inserted himself into the comments as if it were a hot-line to my home. I shut down the blog [off the air…<\/a>]. When I returned, I held and moderated all the comments. My models were Danny Carlat and Soulful Sepulcher who had done that for years for the same reason. Ultimately they left the public stage. After a time, the assault was over and I stopped. I didn’t like doing it. I don’t live at the computer and often compose with a primitive device, so it meant a lot of "checking in."<\/p>\n

Time passed, and there came a period with multiple commenters who preached." I wrote them, asking them to stop, and they either did or moved on – all except one who escalated. It wasn’t that his views were the main problem, it was that he was dominating the space and insisting on agreement. I said that, even gave my alternative views and he escalated. I finally bannned him [a limit…<\/a> last paragraph]. He found my home email address and made his closing argument. When I occasionally comment elsewhere, he often chimes in with another version of the story. I lost a lot in that episode. A number of very thoughtful commenters who didn’t feel safe and moved on. I hear from them from time to time, but it’s not the same as when they were adding input and perspective frequently.<\/p>\n

In my life, I ran a number of therapy groups and groups of other kinds. The solidest line of thinking I ever read was written by Winfred Bion, a British Kleinian Psychoanalyst who was, as is common in that set, a lunatic who spoke in very peculiar ways. But his theories on the behavior of unstructured groups is as solid a piece of evidence-based-medicine to me as Vitamin C cures Scurvy. He says that people in groups are all frightened at some level, and that fear mobilizes aggression [in all of us]. At some point in a group’s history, the aggression will rise to the surface. Actually, it is in part because people feel safe enough to let it. One common solution is for the group to find a shared enemy, and the group organizes around opposition to that shared enemy. Think Klan. Think Nazi. Think tree-hugger. Think political party. Think Cult. We’ve all been in such groups. Group members are safe with each other guaranteed by the presence of a common enemy. Such a group can never change. <\/p>\n

Another possibility is that the aggression can be mobilized inside the group, among members. A group leader can’t keep that from happening. It’s human nature. And people begin to take sides. There’s often a scapegoat, a person who is seen as the problem, and the group points towards that person. They have to shape up or ship out<\/em>. It may be a weak link. But it may also be a strong link. Here, the group leader needs to do a difficult thing – keep the group from disintegrating or from killing [extruding] the scapegoat [whether they deserve it or not]. Success in that endeavor leads to the leader becoming the target. The leader is in charge, so fix it!<\/em> The double bind is that the leader is only human and knows he\/she can’t resort to murder – having just prevented several. He\/she can’t change people, so he\/she becomes the target. Weak<\/em>. Playing favorites<\/em>. No real leader at all<\/em>. Safety was only an illusion<\/em>. I once watched a perfectly competent Full Professor who ran a Resident’s Group be fired by the Group itself, and later censured by the University – which he left. His error? He thought he could fix it. He originally had given me the Bion book, but I don’t think he’d read it, at least not the last chapter. There’s only one outcome that ever works. The leader is no longer the leader, but survives and becomes just another vulnerable member. The safety of the group becomes the valued property and responsibility of the group itself. And safety without a shared enemy is the only viable principle for groups to remain healthy, creative, and endure. You saw the movie already. The Wizard of Oz<\/font><\/strong>. And that outcome is never guaranteed. <\/p>\n

I haven’t really thought of the regular commenters as a group, but now that I think about it, you are. Steve said it best. I went back and reread all the comments for several months and this isn’t the first tit-for-tat. When it happens, I wince. Sometimes I turn off the comments. But mostly I wince. I’m not going to play wizard, spank anybody. Fire anybody. In a couple of emails, it was suggested that I’m protecting a "pal" – Dr. Carroll. We are pals, but he doesn’t need me to protect him. There was also a hint of the League of Arrogant Male Psychiatrists<\/em> idea in there. I hate those people too. This bruhaha makes me aware of how much I value the input from everybody currently commenting. You have shaped and occasionally changed my own opinion. I don’t mean to be drippy, but I’m genuinely honored you chose this space to think out loud in. Here’s my contribution to the theme of safety. I just explained a psychoanalytic principle of Group Psychology out loud on this blog. After 34 years of being ridiculed for even thinking about such things, I just don’t do that – ever – except with safe colleagues. While I don’t plan to continue doing that here, I must feel at least safe enough to reveal the part of being a psychiatrist that has most preoccupied and mattered to me throughout my career.<\/p>\n

I can’t fix this [and shouldn’t]. If you want some resolution, I’ll be glad to pass any email addresses or messages along between any two of you if you both agree. Otherwise, I can only hope you remain valued contributers to this blog. And there’s something else – coming in the next post…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m aware that an argument broke out in the comments that stepped outside the little box above the comments section – went interpersonal. It has happened before, which why that box says what it says. The first time, the circumstances were unusual. It was someone in town who discovered I had a blog and inserted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51572"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51584,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51572\/revisions\/51584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}