GROUP THERAPY I have always had a problem with groups, and I don't quite know why. I think it's because I mistrust them. Since adolescence I've noticed behavior adjustments in people whenever I observed them in groups as opposed to being one-on-one with me. When someone is involved with a group they have a tendency to take on the group mind. I used to regard this as nothing more than a weakness in them. As time went on though, I came to see it as a manifestation of the sheer coercive power of the group. In my book, Watching the River Flow, a personal journal, I make several entries on the subject of groups. In one of those entries I mused that the sole purpose of a group (any group, a church, a labor union, or a political party) is mind control. Groups form for the exclusive purpose of controlling individual minds, which is another way of saying that they form for the purpose of suppressing individuality. Somehow, this feels like something I want to shun. Now, admittedly, I have a bit of a problem with this idea myself. You see, I also believe that there is no such thing as an individual mind. The very nature of mind seems to be communal. The appearance of an individual mind (what we so casually refer to as individuality) is thus an illusion. In my very first book, The One Thing, I illustrated the truth of this by using feral children as an example. Growing up outside the influence of a human community, they were (in every instance) unable to speak and thus participate in the commerce of ideas. Now, it just so happens that one of those ideas is that of ourselves as an individual (and separate) ego. We feel the presence of this ego whenever we hear our name, or when we use words like "my" or "mine" and so on. But feral children never learned these words. They never learned any words. Because of this they also never learned to identify themselves as a distinct person, indeed as any person. (They never learned that they were a who. They'd have had to been acquainted with the word "who" in order to do that.) The word "person," (because it is a word) is also an idea (all ideas are words, either a single one or a group of them). And in case you haven't noticed it, words come from other people. There is no such thing as a personal language. All languages are social. They belong to rather large groups, groups which we refer to as "nations." Somehow, somewhere, milling around in one of the groups I was placed in, I got the idea that I was an individual, a very distinct individual with a strong will. I got this idea (as well as all the rest of my ideas) from the words that were thrown at me once upon a time. Whatever. In spite of the fact that I know this, I still do not trust groups. Do I blame myself for this? No! I blame the groups. Some group (I don't remember which one) at some time in my life, impressed this idea on me. I accepted it, embraced it, and now I don't trust groups. As strange as it may sound, I don't like groups because one particular group (or perhaps an influential member of that group) at some point in my life, gave me a very clear instruction (or perhaps a very devious suggestion) not to trust groups. It must be so, because all ideas are communal. They are built with language, and no individual has a language that is his and his alone. Words are learned in the context of groups (usually families), which (in the purest technical sense) makes the ideas that are created by those words the common property of the group. If I am correct with my assumption (and I believe that I am) this can only mean that group minds are every bit as susceptible to becoming neurotic (even psychotic) as the so-called individuals that comprise them. Indeed, if there are no individual minds, then any perceived neurosis is unequivocally that of a group mind. If there are no individual minds, there can be no individual neuroses. All psychological deviancy is thus the product of the group, not the individual. The group needs therapy; not the individual. It'll Put the Fear of God in You, Boy
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