Anarchy

Abstract

Therapists face situations in which individuals, subgroups, or groups cannot or will not tolerate and rebel against truth seeking. Anarchy, a virulent form of rebellion, utilizes excessive and violent projective identification to engulf participants in treatment—destructive enactments. Anarchic members and/or group processes aggressively disturb mental and emotional links within and among individuals through which truth is negotiated and substantiated by experience. Empathy, thinking, language—and the social boundaries of time and space—may be applied deceitfully to undermine truth seeking. The goal is to destroy the particular group, and also, the very idea of group, which is envied and hated. In four case examples, members (including the leaders) lost their confidence and faith in groups to the extent to which they were not protected from anarchy.