The Phenomenology of “Normality” in the Context of Trigant Burrow's Group Analysis

Abstract

This article is based on the work of an experimental research community organized for the pioneer group studies of Trigant Burrow, M.D. The participants undertook to examine their own feelings and interactions as exemplifying society-at-large, a research process unprecedented at the time (1921) and, as far as I know, unduplicated since. Burrow's investigation was a predecessor of group therapy, but distinctive in focusing on a usually covert aspect of "normal" everyday life-the habitual sense of "I." It asked whether our customary sense of self-identity is a reliable guide for action, and the investigators-who remained together as a community for more than 30 years-sought the answer in their own moment-by-moment feelings and sensations, and in an immediate probing of motivations in the here-and-now. Eventually, the investigators defined a wide-spread social dislocation related to our "normal" sense of self and the implicit self-other oppositeness embodied within social institutions. Moreover, the group analytic probing led to the direct experience of the physical sensations that accompany this conditioned sense of self (an observation later tested instrumentally). Sensing the somatic tensions that accompany such divisiveness, the investigators were able to differentiate between them and the more fundamental background of the organism which embodies the concrete experience of species solidarity inherent in each of us. I suggest that the phenomenology of "normality" is marked by the absence of this direct physical appreciation of our human unity.