"Getting Along Together: Communitas and the Challenge of Pluralism"
by David Goff, Ph.D.
David Goff, Ph.D., teaches at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where he employs large group processes to promote community and personal development. His graduate research into the "psychological sense of community," is the first study to describe psychological dimensions of group consciousness. In addition to his writing and on-going research, he directs A Foundation for Interdependence which is dedicated to developing a psychology of interdependence. The Foundation integrates mainstream psychotherapy, transpersonal psychology, and new social learning technologies to create learning communities which catalyze personal empowerment and cultural transformation. The Foundation offers workshops, training seminars, on-going groups, social rituals and organizational consultation. Additionally, he practices psychotherapy in Palo Alto, California.
by David Goff, Ph.D.
David Goff, Ph.D., teaches at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where he employs large group processes to promote community and personal development. His graduate research into the "psychological sense of community," is the first study to describe psychological dimensions of group consciousness. In addition to his writing and on-going research, he directs A Foundation for Interdependence which is dedicated to developing a psychology of interdependence. The Foundation integrates mainstream psychotherapy, transpersonal psychology, and new social learning technologies to create learning communities which catalyze personal empowerment and cultural transformation. The Foundation offers workshops, training seminars, on-going groups, social rituals and organizational consultation. Additionally, he practices psychotherapy in Palo Alto, California.
David Goff is a memeber of the board of advisors for bluelab
Amidst the mayhem and destruction of the Los Angeles riots in 1992, Rodney King expressed what may be a core question for our time: "People, can't we all just get along?" His plea gives voice to the urgent need we have to cooperate as well as to the uncertainty we feel about our capacity to do so. We now live with extraordinary cultural and ethnic complexities which arouse fear and mistrust. Never before has humanity faced the challenge of creating a sense of community that includes such great diversity. The life of the planet and of future generations may depend upon how we respond to King's question.
Can we all get along? It is clear that we don't. One does not have to look solely at racial, ethnic, and religious hostilities to confirm this perception. The national rates of divorce and domestic violence dramatically convey the tensions that abide at the heart of our daily interactions. An honest appraisal of the distance and distrust that separates us from neighbors and co-workers reflects this perception as well. This is a grievous truth of life in America.
The tension that exists within American culture can also be seen operating globally. The Carter Center is currently monitoring 124 wars worldwide. The preponderance are civil wars, occurring between neighboring and often related peoples and manifesting atrocities such as those associated with Bosnia, Somalia and Ruanda. Another disturbing facet of how we behave in relationship with other forms of life is revealed by our abuse of the planetary environment. Much of the concern about the sustainability of human culture and our endangered biosystem revolves around our inability to get along with otherness, be it human or non-human.
How have we come to be here? Despite the best intentions of the pilgrims who pledged at Plymouth Rock to live "as members of the same body," the American way emphasizes the rights and privileges of the individual. This great nation was born by freeing individuals to pursue their own forms of happiness and self-expression. Now it is threatened by it's own success. By sacrificing a sense of the common good, America provides fertile ground for narcissism, alienation, isolationism, and fear of anyone who is significantly different.
This continuing emphasis upon individualism conflicts with our critical need for connection and commitment to one another. Our inability to get along leads to cultural and political gridlock. Modern ecological and geopolitical issues are complex, and involve large systems that require sustained collective attention, yet our mistrust of otherness retards our ability to respond collectively. The dilemmas we now face ask us to care for the good of the whole as we care for the good of our selves.
How do we achieve this development? When we turn toward traditional concepts of community for guidance we see that community has been associated with long-standing relationships which occur among people who share a geographical location and a common worldview. These communities are distinguished by the common values they hold, by the norms they create to implement those values, and by the shared means they employ to survive and thrive. In the language of sociology these communities would be referred to as "communities of affinity." Organized around shared values, they demonstrate cooperation and the power of unifying principles.
At the same time, however, these communities of affinity contain seeds of the very dilemma which now threatens our cultural and biological survival. In our multiethnic and multicultural society we are overwhelmed with a diversity and complexity which traditional communities have never had to embrace. If we adhere to traditional approaches we are quickly stymied by the inevitable question: Whose values are the "right" values? Whose principles will determine the organization of society? This question, laden with the struggle for cultural identity and ideological supremacy, fuels much of the conflict now ravaging the planet.
An answer to King's question does not lie in communities based upon similarities. A new basis for community is needed: one that values diversity and confirms the integrity of multiple co-existing realities, and that is based upon a palpable experience of how profoundly connected we all are. This form of community could be described as a shared experience of interconnection, as social communion, or as a collective state of consciousness.
Over the last several years my research has identified large group processes which appear to generate such experiences of a unitive state of consciousness. I have labeled this state of consciousness "communitas," a term borrowed from cultural anthropologist Victor Turner. Fascinated by the collective rituals of indigenous peoples, Turner noted that these rites generated a form of social communion. He called this "communitas" and his observations provided the vision which informed my research.
Turner observed that these communal processes created a "ritual space" that existed outside of the normal cultural context. He employed the term "liminality," derived from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold, to describe this central aspect of the ritual process. He described liminality as "anti-structural," meaning that in ritual space, cultural structures dissolved, and all forms of identity conferred by cultural status also dissipate. In this space "betwixt and between" the usual social structures, ritual participants met one another as whole and equal beings to examined their relationships and culture.
Turner also described the "liminal zone" as an empty space. Communitas emerges as equal individuals collectively submit to the ordeal associated with having no status, no role, no mitigating or mediating structure to temper their encounter with the human dilemma. Communitas was described as sacred and holy, and as being suffused with a renewing and generative power. These perceptions led Turner to assert that cultural transformation could be attributed to the impact of communitas upon collectives.
Turner's descriptions of ritual liminality provided useful criteria for identifying contemporary group intensives which might generate experiences of communitas. One such group intensive is the Community Building Workshop, developed by M. Scott Peck and The Foundation for Community Encouragement. The workshop is a large group intensive that often involves fifty or more participants. It usually occurs over three full days. It is totally experiential. The sole task of the participants is to create an experience of community: toward this end, they sit in a large circle and interact.
Two trained leaders facilitate the experience; they provide simple guidelines which include: listen deeply, speak when you feel moved to speak, use "I-messages," practice inclusivity, observe how you maintain separation, and share responsibility for the outcome of the workshop. Facilitation includes the use of silence, teaching stories, re-emphasizing the guidelines, and brief feedback to the group as a whole.
According to Peck, the workshop proceeds through four phases: psuedo-community, chaos, emptiness and community. The initial stage of the process, psuedo-community, is marked by congenial, comfortable and polite interactions. These interactions avoid conflict and preserve a superficial sense of harmony.
Chaos emerges when differences come into the open and attempts are made to establish what is appropriate behavior in the group. As different opinions emerge, group members attempt to ignore or change each other's positions. This process leads to tension and distrust. This chaotic phase reveals a struggle for power in the group — the same dynamic which occurs in our larger culture —resulting in fear, hatred, and withdrawal. The chaos phase constellates on a small scale the cultural crisis which is being played out in the streets of our cities and within the halls of our government. In the workshop participants are confronted with the stark realization that, despite their intentions, they themselves are sources of this terrible dilemma.
In Peck's model there are two ways out of the chaotic phase. Both work, but only one leads to community. The group can organize it's way out of chaos (and it's chance for community) by choosing a task to focus on, a member to "heal," or a subgroup to scapegoat. Or it can "empty" itself of the expectations, preconceptions, and prejudices which prevent community from emerging.
Emptiness calls for a form of dying. Group members create a space for community by voluntarily sacrificing their needs to be right, to be in control, and to remain invulnerable. The members surrender their methods for protecting themselves from personal and existential vulnerability. Community emerges as vulnerability increases and as group members surrender their expectations and enter the unknown together.
My research involved surveying and analyzing the reported experiences of over 200 participants in a number of these workshops. Using a statistical method known as factor analysis, the results revealed three primary factors which describe the participant's experience. These factors were labeled: "a sense of community," "the experience of otherness," and "the sense of the human existential dilemma."
The "sense of community" factor reveals that many participants shared what they described as an important and profound experience. This experience included a shift of consciousness to an enlarged sense of self. This shift was accompanied by strong feelings of peace and tranquility. Those who scored high on this factor reported a strong sense of connection, and feelings of compassion and kindness for each other. This experience included transpersonal features such as a sense of unity, feelings of sacredness, an ineffable quality, and a sense of timelessness. In essence, participants reported experiencing a collective shift into a unitive state of consciousness.
Remarkably, this shift in consciousness occurred despite a high degree of awareness of the differences, or "experience of otherness," that the group included. The experience was reported to be painful and disturbing; it included feelings of annoyance, resentment, alienation, distrust and conflict with others in the workshop. These same participants also reported awareness that they were judging others, and that their beliefs about these others, or themselves, created distance. This factor highlights the difficulties associated with the encounter with differences, personal and cultural.
The third factor, "the sense of the human existential dilemma,” shows that the workshop resolves these difficult feelings, and preserves the diversity of the group, by providing a mutual experience of humankind's underlying existential vulnerability. Those scoring high on this factor indicated recognition of the degree of human uncertainty, of how limited humans are, and of how vulnerable others are. Participants also recognized the desire to avoid feeling the pain and uncertainty that is part of human life. They reported that awareness of this level of shared vulnerability engendered compassionate feelings and an emotional sense of connection.
This quantitative and qualitative study, entitled "An Exploratory Study of the Existential and Transpersonal Dimensions of the Psychological Sense of Community as Found in The Community Building Workshop™," was conducted in the spring of 1991. A 98 item questionnaire was constructed and administered to a pool of 539 workshop graduates living in California. There were a total of 234 respondents.
The survey items included forty-four descriptive statements which were generated from a synthesis of the phenomenological and affective elements described in the literature of group processes reported to lead to a sense of community. The results of these 44 items were subjected to a principle components factor analysis designed to identify the elements of the participants' experiences which offered the greatest explanatory value as descriptors of that experience.
This method extracted a total of six factors which were labeled as follows: Sense of Community, Sense of Otherness, Sense of Human Existential Dilemma, Sense of Engagement, Sense of Personal Existential Dilemma, and Sense of a Difficult Experience. Items describing previous experiences, the impact of the workshop, and the demography of the subject population, were also examined for correlation with these factors.
The findings showed that the central experience produced by the workshop was a collective shift of consciousness toward a unitive state. This shift coincided with a collective experience of existential vulnerability catalyzed by the difficulties associated with an experience of otherness. This state was described as including powerful feelings, a strong sense of emotional connection, an enlarged sense of self, an extension of kindness and compassion toward others. It included mystical features described as: feelings of sacredness, an experience of union with a larger whole (including the persons with whom the experience was shared), and the experience of having participated in something that was paradoxical and difficult to communicate in words.
The experience positively impacted upon the respondents' feelings of connection with others and the larger processes of life. The respondents reported that their experience of this collective shift into a unitive state of consciousness had a transformative effect upon their trust in others, sense of purpose and hope for the future.
The findings of this study show that large groups can integrate diversity and survive the difficult tensions that accompany the presence of otherness, that this becomes possible when the group shares an experience of human vulnerability, and that this catalyzes the emergence of a collective state of consciousness. The results demonstrate that large groups can generate experiences which make recognition of our interrelatedness palpable and provide confirmation of our underlying social and ecological interdependence. The study also reveals that transpersonal experiences of an enlarged sense of self can occur at system levels beyond the individual.
These findings have important implications for psychology and for the practice of psychotherapy. By establishing that large groups can address the tensions that create and sustain cultural issues, the way is paved for a new form of psychology — a psychology of interdependence. This psychology, founded upon direct experience of the underlying interconnectedness of life, recognizes that individuals suffer in a culture that denies interrelatedness. Such suffering bears important feedback about cultural processes that need to be transformed.
Understanding that large groups represent a microcosm of the culture at large, this emerging psychology attends to the suffering associated with cultural tensions. It explores and examines the psychological and the cultural dynamics which create racism, ethnic distrust, homelessness, and our abusive relationship with the environment. As a transpersonal psychology it assists collectives through developmental steps, while educating individuals about how they contribute to this transition. Thus, this psychology treats individuals and the culture simultaneously.
This new psychological perspective is emerging from many sources. A number of independent practitioners are pioneering the development of new models, techniques, and practices which address our ability to get along together. British Psychiatrist Patrick de Mare refers to the beneficial effects these processes generate as "socio-therapy." De Mare reports that groups uncover the underlying dynamics that generate cultural structures by employing "dialogue," a form of collective free association. This method brings to awareness the basic assumptions that shape a group's interactions. It makes explicit the ideological basis for the sub-groups and cultural structures which separate, divide, and create conflict.
Physicist David Bohm, renowned for his theory of a holographic universe, developed the practice of group dialogue over a twenty year span. Viewing dialogue as culturally transformative, he described it as a method for achieving "group mindfulness." With practice, groups achieve a sense of impersonal fellowship and group consciousness. In this state it is possible to examine cultural assumptions and to witness the effects that such collective thoughts produce. Bohm and De Mare both insist that the individual and the society can be simultaneously humanized by the use of group dialogue.
Arnold Mindell, founder of the Global Process Institute, has developed a process oriented form of psychotherapy which he applies to working with groups sometimes numbering in the hundreds. He addresses cultural conflicts such as racial and ethnic tension through processes designed to make a group's collective unconscious more conscious. To Mindell, every group generates a "field" of information which impacts upon the behavior of the group and every group participates in cultural fields. By rendering the contents of these fields conscious and working with the conflicts inherent in them, his work models "deep democracy," a more inclusive form of participation in our underlying interrelatedness.
Businesses are being increasingly viewed as "learning communities" where collective processes can be practiced that benefit the development of the participating individuals, the organization, and the larger culture. The rapidly changing business climate has made it imperative that organizations adapt quickly and efficiently. The need for such flexibility and responsiveness has led to innovative methods for working with collective processes. Management and organizational development experts, such as MIT professor Peter Senge, are experimenting with techniques that emphasize systems thinking, dialogue, shared vision, and total participation.
These new practices, employing a larger context to focus upon cultural dynamics, offer a timely response to the concerns of those who have been critical of psychotherapy's effectiveness as an agent for social change. These concerns focus on the "one-to-one" emphasis in therapeutic practice, and its limitations in addressing mass disorders, such as addiction, environmental illness, and domestic violence. Healing in the therapeutic context is seen as an "inner" experience. By emphasizing the subjective experience of the client, it reinforces individualism and isolation. This leads to cultural passivity rather than political and social action. James Hillman suggests that self should be re-defined so that it becomes more inclusive, that self should be seen as an "interiorization of community."
Critics concerned with the environment are arguing for a therapeutic perspective that views the person and the planet as part of a single continuum. To them, successful treatment must incorporate the needs of life as a whole. Believing that the pain of the ecosystem is being expressed through our private emotional and spiritual anguish, they are concerned that this travail cannot be effectively understood by a psychology which reduces this sensitivity to an individual pathology.
Underlying these concerns we hear the essential recognition that communal models for healing are needed now. This returns us to the question of whether or not we can "get along." We now live with the uncertainty and urgency embodied in this question. Our best response lies in leaning bravely into this question until, as the poet Rilke points out, we can "live the answer."
The question invites us to struggle together for insight into the psychological dynamics which create the cultural tensions and conflict that threaten us. Engaging with this question can lead to new psychospiritual insight and functional capabilities. My research has shown that these abilities can be awakened through an experience of communitas. Subsequent developments have shown that participation in a large group, employing a learning community approach, provides a social context where these capabilities can be further developed.
When individuals realize that their well-being is linked inextricably with the well-being of the whole, and they can see a way to develop the skills that provide them with a functional capacity for interdependence they will very often begin to practice community building as a form of psycho-spiritual discipline.
Turner described the social bond that arose from communitas as a "strong sentiment of humankindness." Practicing community means cultivating the conditions which can make an experience of humankindness real. When we practice community we invest our lives and our hope in a mutual effort to insure that we, and the generations to come, will know that we can all get along.
References
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Bohm, David, (1991), On Dialogue, David Bohm Seminars, Ojai, CA.
de Mare, Patrick, (1991), Koinonia: From Hate Through Dialogue to Culture In the Large Group, Karnac Books, London.
Friedman, Maurice, (1983), The Confirmation of Otherness: In Family, Community and Society, Pilgrim Press, New York, NY.
Goff, David, (1992), Communitas: An Exploratory Study of the Existential and Transpersonal Dimensions of a Psychological Sense of Community as Found in the Community Building Workshop™, unpublished dissertation, The Insitue for Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.
Hillman, James & Ventura, Michael, (1992), We've Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy — And the World Is Getting Worse, HarperCollins, San Francisco, CA.
Macy, Joanna, (1991), World as Lover, World as Self, Parralax Press, Berkeley, CA.
Mindell, Arnold, (1992), The Leader as Martial Artist: An Introduction to Deep Democracy, HarperCollins Publishing, Newv York, NY.
Peck, Scott, (1987), The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.
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Senge, Peter, (1990), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday & Currency, New York, NY.
Turner, Victor, (1969), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
