How Group Therapy Helps You Give and Receive Criticism

In the beginning of psychoanalysis, Freud encouraged his patients to “say anything.” This invitation quickly reveals the resistances and inhibitions we have to doing this. There are many things we don’t want to say and can’t say even if we wished to. There are thoughts and feelings that are unacceptable to us, that we can’t even allow ourselves to think and feel. Whatever we can tolerate knowing about ourselves is further censored by our fear of sharing it.

“So say whatever goes through your mind. Act as though, for instance, you were a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views you see outside.”

― Sigmund Freud, On Beginning the Treatment (1913)

The person we’re speaking to might judge us the same way people did when we first learned the inhibition. If your parents or teachers or friends were triggered by something you said, most of the time they didn’t communicate this to you without shaming you in the process. This is how you become a social, civilized person. But the price is the shadow—the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to be and can’t admit about ourselves.

“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

—Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131

Even if you trust that the person you’re speaking with won’t squash you, there’s still good reason to keep quiet. Not so long ago in our collective history we believed that the right words could curse someone, bringing sickness, disaster, death. This more primitive way of viewing the world is the foundation upon which our reason rests. Young children often demonstrate this magical thinking. What if you say something horrible about a person and then something horrible happens? Speaking makes it real.

So the invitation to “say anything,” is a bold one. It opens the door to a lifelong journey of self-discovery. As long as we walk that road, we continue to encounter our internal obstacles to free thought, feeling and expression. The further we go, the more liberated we become. We heal, integrate and grow.

There is a parallel to society.  Just as free speech undermines the psychic tyranny within us, it is the most powerful safeguard we have against abusive government and cultural suppression.  The more a society encourages freedom of thought and speech, the more likely it is that the best ideas we can come up with will be embraced and the most destructive ones abandoned.

I don’t have to tell you how tall an order this is. The premise of almost all religion is that there are certain ideas that are the right ones, the correct beliefs, the True and the Good. Opposing these are the heretical, blasphemous ideas of the apostates and the pitiable fools who don’t know the Truth. 

In our day, when politics has largely replaced religion, the dividing line between Good and Evil easily lands between Right and Left. 

What makes free speech possible?

In therapy, there is the guarantee that unless you are describing actual violence or abusive neglect, your words will be kept confidential and not used against you. But this isn’t enough. There also needs to be an understanding that things are hard to say because of the intensity of feeling associated with them. We are vulnerable creatures, easily frightened, wracked by shame and guilt, burdened by generations of grief and profoundly uncertain what to do with the aggressive impulses within us. All of this needs patient attention.

This is why indefinite, long-term therapy is so important. Each person is different and it is impossible to know how long it will take to witness and honor the web of thoughts, feelings and sensations that constrict us.

Individual therapy provides the ideal container for coming to terms with yourself. Group therapy helps you come to terms with others. They are both essential.

In Group, members are similarly invited to “say anything.” The challenge is much greater than in individual therapy, as you have to contend with the reactions of more people. The pace is faster and harder to control. The fear of being shamed, shunned, ignored or despised is high. The increased emotional intensity makes the commitment to the process all the more important. Only with the promise to keep coming back, to keep giving attention to the feelings evoked by saying and hearing difficult things, do we have the opportunity to work through the psychic danger of speaking freely.

Of course, this is a promise that is hard to keep. Inevitably, we are disappointed when someone leaves Group prematurely. The frustration of unfinished work lingers like a ghost, requiring the remaining members to work harder to acknowledge and process their reactions to the departed.

Something like this haunts our society. The exchange of ideas is accompanied by high emotional voltage. The trauma of the past reverberates in today’s accelerated heart beats. We are afraid and because we are ashamed of our fear, we get mad.

Unlike therapy, in society the dangers of speaking freely are legitimate. The more fascist a country is, the more that the wrong words could lead to prison, torture and death. Here in the US in 2021, you might lose friends, family or professional community, opportunities to speak or publish, etc.

The American Group Psychotherapy Association recently published a draft of its Safe Environment Policy, designed to demonstrate the AGPA’s commitment to becoming an antiracist organization. I responded to sections that seemed draconian in their attempt to punish expressions of unacceptable sentiment. In response to my comments and those of others, the AGPA changed the document significantly. 

This is an example of the power of speaking your truth, and the importance of organizations that are reflective and open to correction. It also highlights the potential danger of not speaking. 

Our lives provide each of us with innumerable opportunities to say something scary and difficult, and different levels of risk for doing so.

When we’re bored in a conversation with a friend, we may think that our only options are suffering or being rude. But the truth is more nuanced than that. Our fear of hurting the other person’s feelings lives alongside our desire to connect and our frustration that we’re missing each other. Every time we’re disappointed by someone we’re confronted with a similar challenge, but the more power the person has over us and the less reflective they are, the greater the risk of confrontation.

The gift of therapy and group therapy especially is that it builds this reflective capacity. It makes it possible for us to receive the criticism of others and be able to give that criticism in the most effective way. We become more truthful creatures, and as we access and express our truth, we become more free.