'Oh, hide me from the fury of the heart.'

[From The Citizens, by Thomas Blackburn. Quoted by a participant in 1991]

 

The sequence of annual study days began on 22 February 1991, the eve of the Gulf War. The first discussion took place during the count-down to the five pm deadline for that conflict, and this accident of timing remained a reference point in future years. In 1991 it was recognised that escape into small self contained communities was a fantasy of the previous decade. There was now a need for a new analysis of individual freedoms and responsibilities.

We had lost the promise of stable conflict that the Cold War offered. The containment provided by the Cold War was however problematic, based on a splitting of East and West and leading now to the projection of insane aggression onto the figure of Saddam Hussein. The impending reality of the land war was a reminder that these were not just computer games. The IRA mortar attack on Downing Street was, in addition to being an act of terrorism, an image of potency against the Establishment and as such excited interest.

A theme for the whole series was articulated by one participant: 'I have never felt so uncertain.'

 

In the next year, we identified certain themes, and these were taken up further in subsequent years:

1. We were living in an anaesthetised society.

There was an overload of communication, so that it was impossible to take it all in. Either we feel we have to know everything or we retreat behind a wall. We need this defence against not understanding, because of the perceived severity of the nature of change.

Constant communication was destroying our known boundaries. There was a loss even of a sense of time, as we learned to cope with the instant availability of information.

2. The individual was becoming privatised.

It was as if each person had a survival capsule, where one could be, surrounded by disasters. People were losing the understanding that collaboration could be in their best interest. Was there a middle ground to collaborate in, or was the individual becoming an independent unit of economic activity?

3. There was a retreat into the ordinariness of every day life to get away from extra-ordinary events in the external world.

People had begun to talk of compassion fatigue. Political leadership was seen as grey. The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' had collapsed, and statues of Lenin were pulled to the ground in the disintegrating USSR. But living dictators survived, including Saddam Hussain a year after the Gulf War.

4. There were problems with dependency.

Dependency had become a sign of weakness.. The passive dependency of beggars attracted hostility; and hatred of dependency had led to increasing attacks on social workers, nurses and teachers. They were subject both to physical assault and professional denigration.

Feeling dependent AND being expected to make up your own mind led to a feeling of impotence.

When the frame of reference did not feel stable, it was difficult to be sure of what was right, to trust the inner censor. The legal system was failing - having in mind a number of unsafe convictions (the Birmingham 6 and others). So it was necessary to think for yourself, but the same evidence could have an optimistic or pessimistic outcome, depending on your view - in thinking, for example, of South Africa.

5. Were we in a state of transience rather than transition?

In a transitional state, it would be important to hold on to different ideas, as we work anxiously towards uncertain outcomes. But a state of transience is different again - it is like being in a transit camp but not going anywhere. Then it could be attractive to keep hold of a simple idea, to allow a spurious sense of clarity, and a need to create defensive boundaries to protect ourselves from a situation that had become too difficult.

 

In 1993, even more than the previous year, we were stuck with dilemmas of moral ambiguity. People wept for Bobby Moore, the golden boy of the 1966 World Cup, who had just died of cancer. There were other memories ­ of the disputed goal in that world cup final, and nostalgia for childhood ambitions to 'play for England.' But simple solutions lead to concentration camps, and, in contrast, one could think of Primo Levi, a survivor of the holocaust, writing about a grey zone between right and wrong.

If Margaret Thatcher had said there was no such thing as society, heralding a privatisation of the individual and the family, John Major had now proposed that we should understand less and condemn more - - an appeal for a moral certainty that was no longer possible at a societal level. It had become very difficult to hold an unambiguous position of moral certainty, when "greed is good'.

We were also becoming aware that we were under surveillance. The difficulty of keeping secrets, of maintaining a distinction between the private and the public, has meant that we are aware not only of our guilt but our shame. We were all implicated in the murder of Jimmy Bulger, as we saw him being led away in repeated showings of the surveillance video. But we could not identify with angry crowds beating on the prison van, where the murders were being taken to (an adult) court, because we were also aware that these were vigilantes trying to get at two 10 year old frightened little boys. There has always been cheating, in sport, financial affairs, in all aspects of life. But now, with the prospect of being caught out on video, the shaming has become more significant than the guilt.

This question of shame foreshadowed the political fashionable interest in naming and shaming. Shame is a public process of exposing guilt, and this goes some way to explaining our ambivalence about surveillance. In 1992 several of the younger royals were caught out by the ease with which their mobile phones could be overheard electronically. These were early intimations of the erosion of privacy, which has become apparent in recent years.

If we saw a projection of risk onto children, with an abnegation of adult responsibility, early retirements represented a significant absence of leadership. Taking early retirement was a way of getting out of public life. It could be seen as a cop out or as an opportunity to think, a space in which to engage with experience.

A defensive position was to find a niche, where one can have a chance of feeling in control. There was, for example, the artist in the studio painting a donkey as an image of good authority, somewhat Godlike, representing humility and reconciliation. A different example was the child psychiatrist, working with children who rape and murder: taking a role that meant coming up against what could not be understood.

What was the alternative to the abnegation of responsibility?

A participant put the case against the cult of the victim:

'When a child goes missing, the first think I do is to ask, "Where is the mother?" There is so much arrogance. We don't accept that there are certain things we should not do. We want both freedom and all sorts of things that are opposite. Bosnia is not a new story. It happened in Sri Lanka. Soldiers have always raped. If someone gets raped in the park in the middle of the night, we should ask, "What was she doing in the park at 2.am?" People have to take responsibility for what they do, for what happens.'

The Scream, by Munch, has become a popular poster image. In 1994 the original had been stolen. There had also been the death of a popular MP in sexually degrading circumstances ­ this could be understood as a silent scream, representing stigmatised and unacceptable parts of society, which can be too scary to look at.

The adult felt childish: how do I think about the chaos, turmoil and contradictory disjointed messages coming at me when I don't feel good enough to make sense of them?

There was a polarisation, noted in previous years between optimism and pessimism, but now this was linked with another dimension, that of persecutor and victim. A black person asked: 'if there is not optimism, what hope is there for people like me?'

The persecuting majority has to own its aggression and pessimism, for example, in the continuing aggressive feelings towards Serbs in the Balkan conflicts.

There was envy of the victim who was unequivocally a victim ­ because only then, it might be thought, aggression is justified. There was a terror about being found out as the aggressor.

An overall theme of fragmentation led naturally enough to a preoccupation with the possibility of connections. Societal connections ­ and the sense of belonging to society ­ were weakened. There was a vandalism of the superstructure of society. This led to anger about what was still perceived as social distress. 'The burden of individualism is intolerable and unbearable.' There was a splitting between an earnest conscience and a delinquent assertiveness. So there was the plea, for example, to reclaim our citizenship from economic consumerism.

The most striking image of the 'silent scream' might have to do with the experience of the loss of societal containers that threw people back into positions of radical individualism. There was a sense that institutional containers which had, for many years, provided us with the consistency, continuity and confirmation necessary for self-esteem, were changing rapidly. This was apparent in all manner of change. For example, in political processes (as someone stated, 'the political parties no longer represent their known ideologies'); in social processes (a speaker related to 'the absent social'); in technological processes (here speakers referred to 'the computer literate age', and to 'so much information'); and, in economic processes (here people spoke of 'the need for different concepts of management').

This seemed to result in a complexity so great that for much of the time people found it difficult to make connections. This was expressed in terms such as an inability to keep up with the state of progress; a lack of trust in the political, economic and social institutions; and, a general confusion resulting in a loss of identity. A hypothesis to explain this failure to make connections was that society had lost its capacity for symbolic functioning. This would imply that we are living in a very concrete world of fundamentalist thinking, a world dominated by harsh super-egoism and Old Testament demands. It was evident that there were fewer reliable institutional containers which promote ego functioning ­ eg the management of the self. Certainly the state of the health service was a predominant theme in 1994, illustrating a preoccupation with the psychic health of the nation, as if we feared that social institutions were providing fewer defences against stages of anxiety associated with primitive narcissism. The discussion had demonstrated a flight from the primitive and raw aspects of people's actual experience into a genuinely held but distanced preoccupation with South Africa and Bosnia. Was this to avoid an 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth' mentality, an avoidance of the raw states of rage and helplessness that people experienced in the face of ordinary frustrations in their day to day life? The vandalisation of one's car or being locked out of a room were attacks on personal space and stimulated an exaggerated response.

Flight also seemed evident in a desire to return to 'the good old days' that used to provide order and certainty, when hospitals had 'matrons' and we could believe we had the best police force and system of justice in the world. Fight was expressed as anger against those now in authority and seen to be failing. Dependency became associated with impotence ­ for example in relation to the media. Media bombardment made it difficult to take action on a particular front. Hope was located in some unlikely pairings, of Mandela and de Klerk in South Africa, or Major and Reynolds in relation to northern Ireland.

We were living at a distance from the fault lines of civilisation, the political earthquakes in the Balkans and the mass destruction of Rwanda. We experienced the tremors at a distance, but nevertheless they pre-occupied our thinking. All the seismic changes around the world left us with an uncomfortable awareness of our own security. At home there was a long drawn out and unheroic peace process.

A large part of the decade was taken up with the decline and finally the humiliation of the Conservative administration. In 1995 there was evidence of discrediting leaders - the Irish taoiseach after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the belittlement of John Major, even the continued harrying of the old campaigner, Michael Foot, by the Murdoch press. The contrast was with the triumphant electoral victor of Nelson Mandella in South Africa.

 

In 1995 there was a disillusion with heroes, and a sense therefore of an absence of leadership. There were no systems, capitalist or socialist, to believe in: politics was a mindless debate. We were grappling with a sense that our society is in decline, but without the hard evidence for that decline.

One anxiety was that we of becoming 'boiled frogs', slowly dying of incremental change. This was possibly the last year of innocence before the Internet became more of a reality than an already tiring metaphor. So there was still a question of how to relate to 'local difficulties' that were not local to you.

 

In 1996, this theme was encapsulated in the statement, 'Integrity seems to lead to isolation, connectedness to compromise.' We described the privatised citizen. The comparison was stark, between the individual concern to have a clean area in front of your house to the ideal, the tree people in the way of a new by-pass or the 21 year old bomber who blew himself up on a London bus. The Canary wharf bombing had sounded like a door banging or a burst tyre ... 'Citizenship is being a moral actor. We are colluding in a moral emptiness of the self.'

The citizen becomes a customer of a rag bag of services. The lottery turns the taxpayer into a customer. It was a 'condom society', that inhibits life and protects from death.

 

The next year, there was a subdued discussion of the state of society, in which people experienced exaggerated warnings of danger but small incidents could flare up into conflict. What is security? Is London safe? The unconscious was compared to a romantic visitation of the past, like going to the Tower of London. And 'containment ' could mean not saying what needed to be said, a kind of collusion. This was a society, in which diversity was hidden and there was a pressure for conformity. Also an absence of conflict then lead to passivity.

This debate took place in a pre-election phase in British politics, when the overwhelming new Labour victory was not confidently predicted. In retrospect, what is remarkable is the subdued level of debate, the difficulty people had in finding the energy to speak from their experience. The lack of experiential data was countered by a compensatory burst of analytic energy. It was difficult to make links between individual pre-occupations and self interest, on the one hand, and 'grand concerns (poverty, the environment) on the other. There was a fear of difference ­ and Europe represented a lot of difference - leading to a culture of blandness; a false sense of community. There was an easy relativism, in which all people are different and anything goes, leading to a 'leave me alone' mentality. It was not so important then to connect with others, to negotiate collaborative action. There is a wish to ignore differences to get things done.

 

A year later, the mood was different again.

 

In 1998 there was again wish for violence, to be able to bomb an enemy - Iraq being frequently cited, and Saddam again associated in people's minds both with sadism and madness. Participants also experienced events in their own lives - facing redundancy, for example, banishment from the world of work, or their own actions as managers - as violent acts. Every day actions could be cruel, mad, evil even, but done without protest in the name of a good cause.

In such ways, society was seen as being uncontained and uncontaining. 'As a society we have lost God.' This could mean that we were mourning a loss of ideology. People were confused by the reaction to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. They were both fearful and despairing in their discussion of leadership. Leaders were images, on which to project our fantasies. Kennedy was cited as the first modern leader in this sense, with his use of image management.

Participants were feeling their age. Those born after 1950, it was said, did not have strong links with the past, with classical mythology or Victorian self-confidence. (And those born before 1950 have less involvement in the next millennium?) This suggests a splitting of the task or looking back and forward at a time when the old order had gone and the new had yet to arrive.

This suggests a need for a transitional object to manage the past and the future.

Also the uncertainty about the boundary of the personal and the public is relevant to an understanding of the citizen role. In 1998 the private life of the President of the United States became public property as never before, and it was thought that similar public notoriety could happen to any member of society who happens to cross the path of a news story. In 1998 fly-on-the-wall television documentaries were the new soaps, while daytime tv offered the vicarious pleasure of watching very personal public confessions in the guise of quasi-therapeutic interest.

Living in a 'multiverse', with different realities, a world of elites without responsibilities - in the global economy had led to the significance of spin: it is the attempt to impose one reality on others, so that we learn the truth by rote. This could be a welcome defence against the anxiety of not knowing, but did we really believe what we were told?

 

In 1999 there were different attempts to locate violence in different societies, which might be hospitable and polite most of the time but violent and murderous on occasions; comparing more temperamental (and therefore by implication healthier) societies and those that are repressed.

Violence is experienced as pandemic but it is difficult at times to locate it. In 1999 there were different attempts to locate violence in different societies, which might be hospitable and polite most of the time but violent and murderous on occasions; comparing more temperamental (and therefore by implication healthier) societies and those that are repressed. There was a wish to see the black people as carrying the rage on behalf of others. (An association here was with the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, as if only Black people have a sufficient anger against corrupt authority.)

This question of cultural difference was taken further with a discussion of child rearing. Who owns the child? In Naples, it was suggested, the whole community feels authorised to comment and intervene on the welfare of a child, while in south London a woman shouts alone at her child for not sitting straight in the pushchair, as they wait outside a psychiatric clinic.

Political correctness was seen increasingly to represent a certainty of moral position that does not allow for disagreement or questioning; it acts as kind of secular fundamentalism. The older generation might still be feeling the lack of a common enemy, after the collapse of communism and the East-West divide. Those taking a therapeutic or individualistic position want to live the uncertainty of not knowing what is true anymore and there is some evidence of their asserting their right to non-PC attitudes and beliefs, perhaps enjoying fox-hunting in this country or bull-fighting in Spain.

The individualistic position can then also become aggressive in leading to road rage and aggression in other contexts. Some of that violence may be directed towards children, not only the violence of abuse but the violence of neglect through the provisions of public policy. Altogether such a dynamic may be expected to lead to a pervasive sense of helplessness and hopelessness. There is continuing pressure on the boundaries of what is public and what is private and an elision of social roles, leading to emotional overload.

Institutions, unable to cope with the overload, are unable then to work with dependency and attachment. When an internal struggle breaks out, no longer contained by the bullring or the car, we may see examples of individual rage and violence. Management is experienced as manipulative or indifferent, empty of meaning. However, we attempt to breathe life into our leaders by the eroticism of power.

For many people in 1999 there was an idealisation of the new Government and to criticise it now would be to take away the hope and expectation associated with that landslide victory in 1997. But an idealised government - or one that seeks to avoid the negative projections associated with government in the past - leaves people thrashing around looking for a legitimate target for their anger and despair. As government appears reasonable and 'civilised', so we have increased perceptions of living in a irrational and violent society.

 

The millennium celebrations might be seen as a way of having a transitional object between the past and the future, after decades of increasing uncertainty about the stability of any institutions, ideologies, societal structures. But the vandalism of the superstructure, as it was described, could mean that there is not a containing social structure sufficient for us to celebrate. Restaurants and places of public entertainment will be closed. Public transport will be at a premium. The only public buildings to be open, generally speaking, will be the hospitals and they are only staying open by the payment of bonuses to essential staff. The Millennium Experience, so called, will be for many a confirmation of what it means to be a privatised citizen.

 Tim Dartington 28 October, 1999