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Silences
figure largely in the life of therapy groups; yet
this is not a topic about which much has been written
in the literature. A search through the index of a
dozen groupwork texts reveals only three references
to 'silence', and then only in the context of silence
as a problem for group leaders and members, rather
than a resource.
All
of these references are largely concerned with 'the
silent member', a person who is seen as a problem
for group leaders. Thus Irving Yalom says in his standard
work on group psychotherapy:
The only work I
have in my library which briefly discusses silence
as a group phenomenon is (interestingly enough) Butler
and Wintram's Feminist Groupwork [Sage 1991].
They say:
"Group identity
is manifested through the distinct energetic
qualities of group interaction, emotionally
and physically charged. We have already conveyed
the warmth of co-operation, but the cold
of silence and indifference, of absenteeism
can precipitate strong reactions from
members...The weight of silence in the group
may be oppressive, embarrassing, uncomfortable."
[ibid. p. 87-88]
They then go on
to talk about 'the silent member'.
I can find no indication
in my groupwork texts that silence might be a positive,
healing force; and very little discussion of the creative
use of silence in groups. Why is this? How
does silences in groups come to be seen almost entirely
as problematic? Before moving on to try to answer
this question, we need to define our subject matter
more clearly.
What is Silence?
At an individual
level, being silent is not talking; that is, not using
my voice to communicate with others.
It is important
at the outset to confront the idea that my silence
is essentially a form of non-communication. I can
communicate silently and verbally (by letter); I can
communicate silently and non-verbally, as when my
wave tells you I have seen you across the street.
I can also communicate silently, non-verbally and
non-intentionally, as when my slumped posture and
closed eyes indicate that I am bored by what you are
saying. If, with McCluhan, we believe that the medium
is sometimes the message, my non-verbal communications
may be more truthful than my verbal ones, often precisely
because they are non-intentional.
Group silences
occur when everyone in the group is silent for a period
of time. In a typical group silence, the silence,
no-one saying anything, becomes foreground and is
recognised by the group members as such; it becomes
a Silence. It then becomes something other than a
period in which no-one happens to be talking. In many
group circumstances, the longer the silence is, the
more 'loaded' and significant it seems. From the outset
we should note that a group silence is a 'whole group'
phenomenon par excellence. You cannot have
a group silence unless everyone joins in. Creating
a silence is therefore essentially a co-operative
activity, and a complex form of group behaviour.
The Experience
of Silence
How do we experience
group silences? Our writers on groupwork seem not
to be very fond of them. And the truth is that though
people will vary in their ability and willingness
to tolerate them, most dislike them. People may feel
tense, anxious, embarrassed, uncomfortable, even panicky
when they occur.
There is a vicious
circle here: group silences have come to mean 'discomfort'
for many people; and so that is how most people react
to them. The 'silence is uncomfortable' view becomes
self-fulfilling.
This is not to
deny that are those who are comfortable with, even
enjoy silences in groups; but in my experience, the
former is by far the more common experience. So, given
that silence in groups is experienced by many people
as unpleasant, we must now enquire into the origin
of this phenomenon.
Silence in the
Family
I have discovered
when asking people how they learned to dislike group
silences, that many relate their discomfort to a feeling
that the silence means that something bad has happened
or is about to happen in the group, and then relate
this directly to the silences which occurred in their
family. I believe that many of the negative connotations
attached to group silences derive from childhood family
experiences in which silence was used as a power-play.
You can explore
this for yourself using a guided fantasy. Imagine
you are 5 years old, and coming home tired but happy
from 'playing out'. As you go into the house, you
find your parents sitting in silence. How do you feel...what
is happening...?
Having speculated
briefly on the origins of our discomfort with group
silences, I want now to move on to talking about 'silences
as a part of group process'.
Silences and
Atmospheres
Silences in groups
are generally thought of as having a tone or atmosphere.
We say 'the group feels tense today'; and this means
not that 'the group' is literally tense (only people
get tense), but that there are enough tense group
members for it to make sense to say that this feeling
belongs to the group as a whole. Group moods can be
expressed in all sorts of ways - by what is said,
and by what is not said. Thus facial expressions
and body postures, and actions all contribute to a
group atmosphere.
As Dorothy Whitaker
points out, group atmospheres in general are a central
part of group life. In her description of 'the character
of the group as a medium for help' she lists this
as the first important characteristic of groups, and
says:
As an example she
cites the example of a person who becomes depressed
or fearful because of the group atmosphere, and is
unable to deal with this, either because of her own
mental state or because of poor group facilitation.
Silence as a
Part of Group Process
In groups we can
distinguish processes operating at three 'levels':
individual, interpersonal and whole group. [Philippson
& Harris 1992, Chapter 4]. A silent spell in a
group can be considered as having a meaning at all
three, as this brief fictional account shows:
For the sake of
simplicity, I have divided silences into two kinds
on the basis of how people in groups experience them:
'good' ones, which are easily tolerable and may even
be enjoyed; and 'bad' ones which are experienced as
uncomfortable or unpleasant. This is plainly one of
the latter.
To understand the
silence, we need to know that Susan is often late,
and that last week several group members took this
up with her, and there was an angry confrontation,
after which Susan left 'in a huff'. In the current
silence, individual group members feel variously angry,
upset and scared; there is a frigid atmosphere between
Susan and some other group members; and the mood of
the group as a whole is tense and anxious. A very
complex group process is underway.
A 'Force-Field
Analysis' of Group Silences
One way to consider
this kind of group process is to use 'force-field
analysis' [Whitaker, op. cit. , and Lewin 1947]. In
this kind of tense situation, there are opposing intra-
and inter-personal forces which create 'silence as
tension'. So Mark may want to say something to Susan,
but fears that he will lose his temper with her. In
this kind of situation, someone will be silent when
the fear of silence is less than the fear of talking.
Individuals like Mark will both want to speak (that
is, after all, natural behaviour in most group and
social situations) and at the same time be afraid
to do so for reasons that will vary from person to
person, but will usually be based on some imagined
consequence if they do ("I'll be attacked, embarrassed
etc.").
Of course, for
a whole group silence to occur, everyone must remain
silent. Group members will therefore sometimes collude
(often at an unaware level) to maintain the silence,
each for their own reasons. If each individual group
member has reasons for not talking, silences will
develop. A secondary dynamic, such as 'being afraid
to break the silence' may then develop to complicate
the situation even further.
Tense silences
represent a powerful group dynamic, and can tie up
a lot of group energy. People often leave such groups
feeling exhausted and confused. In such circumstances,
what is not acknowledged or said, rather than
what is said is more significant, and controls
the group's activity. The silence is also almost inevitably
part of a power struggle in the group, and individuals
may be using it (often in ways learned in their family!)
as a weapon. This is one important aspect of 'the
power of silence in groups'.
Strategies...
In my experience,
individual group members (and groups as a whole) may
consciously or unconsciously adopt one of several
strategies to deal with 'bad' silences:
(i) Pre-emption:
keep talking so that they never arise.
(ii) Resignation:
just try to sit them out, and hope that someone will
say something.
(iii) Avoidance:
pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is happening.
...and Remedies
In calling silences
simply 'good' or 'bad', I am referring to how people
feel when in the midst of them. An uncomfortable silence
may, of course, be part of a useful group process,
if it is understood and dealt with skilfully.
This might simply involve someone drawing attention
to the silence, and asking what it means for individuals
and for the group as a whole. Feelings and fantasies
can then be explored. Such process work can be extremely
empowering for a group, because in reflecting on the
'blind' or 'secret' areas of group life (as illustrated
by Johari's Window), group members regain control
of group behaviour.
However, in the
majority of groups (many in work situations) where
the level of awareness of individual and group process
is not high, and group process facilitation skills
are lacking, silences will often be experienced as
simply 'bad', a group process to be endured, sat through.
This is why many groups will prefer to avoid them
as much as possible, by keeping talking.
As a result, many
people seldom or never experience silence in groups
as a positive condition. What would it be like? I
begin to lay the groundwork for more positive images
of silence.
Some Different
Meanings to Silence
I want now to move
on to look at some of the broader social meanings
of silence.
People who are
not experienced with silences in groups often describe
them as periods in which 'nothing is happening'. Of
course, as we have seen, the opposite is true. Individually,
people are feeling and thinking all sorts of things;
and in terms of their relationship to each other,
they may all be actively co-operating (or covertly
colluding) to keep the silence going. Staying silent
is a complex group behaviour.
Why is talking
valued more than silence in many situations? Consider
work meetings. In how many are silences allowed to
occur; and when they do occur, how many are positively
used or experienced? I suggest that a view of silence
as empty, wasted time is at the heart of this attitude.
My readings on
'Gender and Organisations' have led me to consider
silence as a 'gendered' phenomenon. In particular,
I am referring to Judi Marshall's discussion of two
stances that man and women take towards life, which
she describes as 'agency' and 'communion' [Marshall,
1984 p. 64]. As a life strategy, agency involves themes
of control and independence; it is about doing.
In contrast, communion as a life-stance involves interdependence
and contact, openness and co-operation; it is about
being.
Now men, and hence
male-dominated societies and organisations, are typically
agentic in their behaviour and beliefs. Achievement-oriented
men (and women) have to be doers. And in our society,
doing (or what passes for doing in organisations;
distinguish what you do and what you actually achieve!)
often involves talking. (Much of my former work life
as a manager in a Social Services Department was taken
up with endless meetings at which we talked...and
talked...)
In this pattern
of behaviour, talking is valued far more than listening.
We might even say, cynically, that listening just
wastes good talking time. Listening (for which you
need to be silent) is typically a communion
skill.
We can see this
in terms of figure and ground. Agentic folk tend to
focus on what is 'figural', what stands out in their
experience, at the expense of the background, the
context. They see a person, a topic, a piece of work
as separate, and even unconnected with, its context.
Now when agentic
people talk, the talking is figural. The background
to me talking is you listening; but I fail to see
it. The connection between my talking and your listening,
remaining silent, is ignored or played down. And in
this way of thinking, silence is undervalued; it's
the talking which is valued.
Communion folk,
in contrast, are 'contextually motivated'; they see
the parts as inseparably related to the whole. The
communion truth on this is that you can't have one
without the other - talking without listening doesn't
make sense. And in true dialogue, real contact, figure
flows into ground and back into figure again, as I
talk, then listen silently while you respond, then
talk again.
Again: on the agentic
view, silence is passive, not-doing, temporarily giving
up control to the other. It is therefore not good.
And this (Marshall and many others would argue) is
the dominant perspective, both in terms of organisational
and general social behaviour in a patriarchal society.
The connexion between
silence and lack of control is important. Silences
are 'unstructured' periods of time, and agentic people
dislike lack of structure, just because it involves
a loss of control. This psychological and social fear
of 'unstructured time' has often been commented on;
Eric Berne [Berne 1964] based a whole psychotherapy,
Transactional Analysis, on describing the myriad ways
in which we seek to fill time.
Silence as a
Sign of Group Ease
Now is the time
to remind ourselves that there are many important
kinds of silence which are relaxed and enjoyable rather
than tense and anxious. People who say "I hate silences"
may never have experienced this quality of silence.
This is the kind of silence in which group members
feel relatively at ease with themselves and with others;
it is peaceful rather than warlike. It is the silence
of 'there is nothing I need or want to say at this
moment'. It is the silence of rest and withdrawal,
while we wait for the next thing to happen, in its
own good time: the silence of 'the fertile void'.It
is also the silence of meditation or prayer, from
which spirituality and communion between people can
emerge.
In my experience,
groups need to spend some time together, and to have
resolved some of the natural tensions of group life
in order to experience these kinds of silence. They
are one of the prime signs of a 'mature', well-established
group. I would put it more strongly: in order to develop,
therapy groups need to cultivate this kind of silence,
and they become stronger and healthier for it. This
is the positive power of silence, and I will now say
more about it.
Reframing Silence
If we are to tap
the positive power of silence, we need to continue
the process of reframing it. One way to do this process
is to appreciate the communion view (underlying, incidentally,
the whole practice of therapy) that relating to other
people, understanding their viewpoints and emotional
needs is a necessity, rather than a luxury. According
to Marshall,
"In a conversational
setting this approach is demonstrated in women's
skills in listening, but these are only
one strand to a broader armoury of 'silence
skills'. Such skills are sometimes dismissed
as 'passive' because they contradict the very
strong social norm that doing is good,
but passivity is highly appropriate in certain
circumstances. Listening is one silence
skill which has recently received some revised
attention, however, mainly for its benefits
in non-directive counselling." [Marshall op.
cit. p. 78]
As Marshall points
out, listening in this setting has been named 'active'
listening, to show that it is 'good'.
Developing a
Communion View of Silence in Groups
In this section
I am going to conclude by briefly identifying two
areas which show important positive advantages to
silences in groups. I hope thereby to encourage the
view that many kinds of silences in groups are valuable,
even essential to healthy group life.
(i) Developing
silences as an important part of group process:
We have elsewhere developed a Gestalt model of group
process using the Gestalt 'contact-withdrawal' cycle
[Philippson & Harris, op. cit.]. This model envisages
groups as moving through a series of stages, which
involve a 'pre-contact' phase in which a group want
or need becomes 'figural'; a period of action and
contact between group members; and a period of satisfaction
and completion. This cycle, which may be short or
long in duration, starts from a group state of relative
withdrawal or rest, in which group members' contact
with their environment is reduced.
As the cycle starts,
this is the place where we as group members are waiting
for something to happen. The group will have finished
one bit of business, and be ready to move on to the
next. In a healthy, well-functioning group it is a
place pregnant with possibilities, full of the creative
and collective power of group members, of potential
energy and excitement. It is the 'ground' from which
figures will soon arise according to group member's
interests and needs. It is sometimes referred to as
'the fertile void', and during it, there will often
be an expectant silence.
After the cycle
has been completed, the group returns to 'withdrawal',
but this time, there is a different feel to the group
atmosphere. The group has worked hard, and now rests
for a while. There is a feeling of satisfaction and
peace. Soon, we will 'move on'; but for the moment
we take a well-deserved rest. We may sit quietly,
enjoying the silence.
If the group is
not functioning as it might, it may 'interrupt' environmental
contact at either point. At the start of the cycle,
this might mean rushing though the withdrawal period
and moving straight into another cycle before we are
ready. At the end of the cycle, we again rush through,
and do not allow ourselves to rest. Groups in which
'activity is all' - workaholic groups - will do this.
The effects are varied; but range from a loss of creative
potential, to burnout.
The conclusion
from this model of group functioning is that groups
need these two important kinds of silences, which
both occur at the 'rest and withdrawal' stage of the
cycle. They are to be welcomed, not feared, and are
a sign of good health in the group life.
(ii) Non-Verbal
Communication: It is a truism, and a highly significant
one, that much human experience cannot be conveyed
by words. Our feelings, our imagination can only be
described clumsily and indirectly: words can never
fully convey experiences. The philosopher Wittgenstein
said that "What we cannot talk about, we must pass
over in silence." [Wittgenstein, 1961]. As proof of
this, we can all think of profoundly important moments
in our lives when silence was an integral part of
the experience. The silence spoke volumes.
I think that this
is especially true when we think of human contact,
how we relate one to another. I believe that much
of what we feel for one another is shown rather
than stated; and that we often use non-verbal
communication as a primary means of person-to-person
contact. Martin Buber, one of the great explorers
of human contact and intimacy says in his great work
I and Thou,
And, we might add,
at times no words either.
Groups of different
kinds are settings in which we relate communally;
and doing so is an important and defining part of
our humanity. Feeling at one with others is a powerful
experience, and the feeling is often most intense
when we do not attempt to convey it with words. I
can recall moments in large groups of 100 people when
everyone was profoundly moved by something that had
been shared by one member of the group, and the sense
of power that I and others experienced in the reflective
silence was unforgettable.
In such reflective
silences we can turn inwards and become aware of ourselves
- our individual thoughts and feelings - sometimes
in a meditative way. But we can also look outwards
and become aware of the other people who are present,
and our inter-connectedness with them. This can, if
we allow it, turn into a spiritual experience. For
some this would be a sense of relating to God; for
an humanist such as myself, it is a sense of being
human and as such in relationship with all other humans.
This is, for me, the ultimate gift of silence in groups.
If we have experienced
such profound silences, and the communion which is
involved in them, the whole experience of silence
in groups becomes altered. Of course, most group silences
will not have this depth of profundity; yet they can
often, somehow, share in it, if we allow this to happen.
It is important that we should.
References
Judi
Marshall [1984] Women Managers: Travellers in a Male
World (Wiley)
Peter
Philippson & John Bernard Harris [1992] Gestalt:
Working in Groups(Manchester Gestalt Centre)
Sandra
Butler & Clare Wintram [1991] Feminist Groupwork
(Sage)
Martin
Buber [1937] I and Thou (T. Clark)
Dorothy
Stock Whitaker [1985] Using Groups to Help People
(Tavistock)
Irving
Yalom [1975] The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
(Basic Books)
Kurt
Lewin [1947] Field Theory in Social Science (Harper
Row)
Ludwig
Wittgenstein [1922] Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(Routledge)
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