Critiquing

Groups are fascinating, infinite whorls of personalities spinning off and away. I sit in on two groups with Jane, one which she leads and I make contributions when I can and the other Jane and I are participants without teaching responsibilities. The groups combined are mostly women, three men including me. The issues that arise are compelling at times as I participate and while I observe as the “retired” therapist I am. That good old hovering attention that Freud advocated has never left me. I listen and I listen and I listen. Believe this or not, I listen while I speak, while I contribute, while I pontificate. It comes into my pores, under my fuselage, beneath my antennas. I am not the eternal fly on the wall; I am the fly at the table and in the chair. I listen with the third ear (Reik).

I observe that everyone has something to say and something to write, that the writing groups serve a plethora of reasons — hear me; succor me; applaud me; extol me; find me remarkable; rescue me; teach me and all the varied human wants you can imagine. Some individuals express their lifelong wounds into writing, some good, some gargled, some horrifyingly graphic. I see that some individuals have very little inhibitions — they would share the hour of their latest dump if they could; boundaries for them do not exist — they have rarely been around healthy human beings for them to internalize reasonable limitations for behavior. One woman gets upset with a man and throws a pen and book across the table in anger followed by the sticking out of her tongue which is a delicious regression in action and rather primitive. One man constantly belabors his personal misogyny in front of these women totally insensitive to what he is saying and often advocating his objectifying women, oblivious to suggestions that he somewhat modify his point of view; he is much like the man who yells fire in the middle of a crowded movie theater and the Supreme Cout has ruled on that. He is adamant about his point of view, granitic in his opinions, stubborn and one can read the tinny worth he derives from his obstinance. Yet he comes each week for all kinds of reasons. I can speculate easily on that but I will not. So complex layers of personal climates of opinion sally forth in these writing classes and I find them annoying, yet fascinating, stupid and stubborn and self-limiting; but in observing them I am slightly to the right and above the fray, for I am not intensely involved. I am the proverbial stranger in a strange land and I am doing my Marco Polo schtick — observing, bartering, learning, acquiring, sewing jewels into the hems of my cloak and vestments.

I realize the self I present, only part of a self that I am and only last night I was labeled a “curmudgeon,” which I find telling but quite accurate. The humor I use, the acid undertow of that, the outrageous puns I play with, the Jewish kibbitzing which is second nature; the outlook I have on human beings — outrageous little children out of control, all comes into play by individuals who are perhaps more guarded than I, more restrictive, less open. I observe how I often am a tabula rasa for some individuals and for others who preen their feathers for they have a “handle” on me,” they “know” me. I laugh to myself — who is so simple to be so comprehended by another who is so simple and grandiose? Often the critiquing itself plays a secondary role as I view the kinetic behavior between and among others. Often I feel like shouting that they should put their neuroses into their writing only to realize they have done so but simply lack the skill to make them real and viable and ultimately valuable. I want to share with them that they are style, not the words by themselves; that the voice of their writing is who they are if only they would hear themselves. Critique groups are not therapy but they are group behaviors and people do not want to be therapized; but they sure want undertstanding, knowledge, self-knowledge and learning which is therapy in and of itself.

Relationships are forming — these two women dislike this woman; that woman turns many people off but that is not a reason to ask her to leave. One woman behaves as if she could run the group and decidedly informs us of her background and the courses she is presently running; she is so defended that I see mammoth skin on her carcass. One woman is deeply Christian which is enough to turn me off, but I observe her for she can be encouraging and humorous and that is enough for me to relent on my prejudice and allow her “in.” In this group, like others, individuals are like neutrinos striking the earth and passing through it. What residues they leave is for each individual to evaluate. We have only met for 4 sessions and groups within groups are forming and I am wondering how that will reveal itself in group discussion. Personally I inhibit my written evaluations of work submitted so as not  to hurt, rather to instruct, although some memoirs, journals and short stories are irritatingly annoying to me for they fully reveal the pain-in-the-ass who wrote it. Ambition reveals ambition, hubris reveals hubris. and stupidity reveals itself manifestly. If you are a constipated self, your work is inevitably constipated.

Because both groups are given free this is misused, often on unconscious levels. People bring all kinds of assumptions to that — I can show up deep into the meeting; I don’t submit work to be read; I can just sit and watch;it’s a slow night on TV and I want to be with people; I want to be heard so here I am, doo dah, doo dah. All the reasons people who are not serious give themselves for joining a criitque group. So Jane and I have resolved that the next group we run will have a small fee attached to it. People do not value free — they abuse it, much like freedom in any country, an abused child. In about 20 minutes we are off to our next meeting which is fairly structured and has an inherent order to it– we could not survive teaching a group that dealt with us like revolving doors. The saga goes on.