The paper, "Is a Non-Competitive Community of Equals Possible?", was presented at the 12th International Association of Psychotherapists (IAAP) Conference, "The Thirst for Meaning: The Practice of Jungian Psychotherapy," October 24-26, 2014.

Good afternoon! My talk is called "Is a Non-Competitive Community of Peers Possible?" It's a reflection on an intervisor group. I've decided not to use video material and invite you to occasionally use your imagination, real-life experience, and the ability to interact with your neighbor.

Question to the audience: What is an intervision group for you?

You often hear that intervision is supervision without a supervisor. Until recently, I thought so too. Now I'm convinced that intervision is more than that, something entirely different. Working with a client in an intervision group is certainly important, but it's far from the group's raison d'être.

I tried to summarize my experience of being in intervision groups. It turns out I've had many of them in my practice. When my colleagues and I had an office in Zelenograd, we conducted regular intervisions from 2004 to 2009. In 2007, I began training in a supervision program, which also included intervision work. That group has since evolved into another one, which is still in operation. I also had a so-called "night" group because I had no other time to meet. After completing a methods seminar in 2008, another group was formed, which has been in existence for six years now. My last experience of spontaneous intervision work was in May of this year, when we conducted an intervision of supervision during supervision training. From my experience, I understand that the formation of an intervision group can be a reaction to the end of training, or a territorial arrangement, where colleagues work in the same space, or as a supplement to supervision if supervision alone is insufficient for some reason. It's also possible to be in several groups simultaneously, for example, if your colleagues' perspective is important to you, but they cannot work in the same group for objective reasons.

Question for the audience: are there any other reasons for creating such a group?

I teach in the MAAP traveling program, travel to other cities, and often say, "Create intervision groups, explore theory, discuss cases, try seminars." But just as often as I suggest this, I hear the response, "You can't get them together!" And I understand that we're talking about anything but an intervision group. This group needs to mature; it can't be appointed or held. Perhaps only three out of a training group of twenty people are ready for intervision, so let them start meeting regularly, and the rest will follow as they become ready.

Jeanne de Salzmann , Gurdjieff's closest follower, writes in her book, The Reality of Being: "This form of cooperation must not be imposed, but recognized only when it arises... For the basis for a conscious connection to emerge, each participant must know and accept himself. Each must experience the need for a group—a world where a special flow of thought and feeling flows" (p. 127).

Likewise, in my opinion, intervision rejects a leader, presenter, facilitator, timekeeper, and so on. Finding such a person in the group and agreeing that everyone will take turns fulfilling this role would transform intervision into a group with a leader, even if temporary, giving it some kind of understandable, familiar, and familiar form. This is why a horoscope cannot be the symbol of an intervision group.

I've been thinking about symbols that could represent such a group. And I understand that the Ouroboros is, of course, universal. But not the Ouroboros of the beginning, but the Ouroboros of the alchemists, the union of opposites.

Jung (Aeon, p. 309): “This circle is a sphere of influence, a magic circle, whose essence is in the union of opposites,... protecting from any harm... A similar idea is formulated by Chinese alchemy: “If you send light around a circle, then all the forces of heaven and earth will crystallize.”

 Jeanne de Salzmann writes that "only at first do we need to create groups artificially, with a leader who would answer questions." And then it becomes clear why intervisor groups often emerge after the end of training. On the one hand, this is a reaction to loss and an attempt to maintain the completed educational process, but on the other, it is the next step in development, each person accepting personal responsibility for what happens in the group.

Of course, when we join a group, the first stage is the same as for any other forming group - orientation, indecision, the search for meaning.

Irvin Yalom, in his book "Group Psychotherapy," notes: "... members examine each other and the group. They search for a suitable role for themselves and consider whether other group members will like them, respect them, ignore them, or reject them."

Then comes the conflict phase.

Irvin Yalom : "The group shifts its focus from acceptance, approval, commitment, defining acceptable behavior, and seeking orientation to the desire to occupy a position of dominance, control, and power. This phase is characterized by contradictions between the group and the leader." (p. 336)

But that's for a typical group. The group we're talking about isn't like that; it has no leader. Moreover, it's made up of people who claim leadership positions. Everyone. Even if they're silent and don't proclaim it. These are people who want to know themselves and who make a significant effort to do so. Let's look at an intervision group as a dream for each participant. And we'll see the beloved "as above, so below," or "as within, so without." Each person is a leader within their own conscious structure, within a group of their own subpersonalities. And just as in a real group, each person is subject to attacks from within by those complexes that resent their leadership. In other words, we're dealing with a very high level of tension, both internally and externally.

It seems to me that the phase of conflict and the phase of cohesion in an intervisor group cannot be separated; they constantly replace each other.

There's a way to understand a creative workgroup: like on a football field—everyone plays for the one with the ball. Or for the one who needs it played for. Everyone uses the group, and the group allows everyone to use it at every moment and in relation to each person differently.

It is possible that for a group to function normally, plasticity, flexibility, and a willingness to change to suit the changing states of each participant are necessary.

The group becomes very important and we can look at the relationship between the member and the group as the relationship between the ego and the self.

And the self turns sometimes the Light, sometimes the Dark side to the ego.

Jung (Aeon, p. 298): “Just as the snake embodies both the saving and the destructive principles, so… the ‘shadow’ signifies, on the one hand, a pitiful and despicable weakness, and on the other, healthy instinctiveness and an indispensable condition for the raising of consciousness.”

Question to the audience: What could be the further development of the group?

It seems to me that the intervisor group can go one of three ways from here:

getting stuck in the Dark Side of the self and then the group will be shaken by conflicts and attempts to find and, with maximum unbearable tension, squeeze out of the group the one who will be chosen to play the role of scapegoat.

Sylvia Brinton Perera (p. 8) "scapegoating means finding someone or someone who can be identified with the evil or harm, hated for it, and expelled from the group so that the rest of the group will not feel guilty and will continue to behave according to the group's norms of behavior."

Also, to reduce tension, a group can use such a move as dividing into pairs, and it does not matter whether this pair is in conflict or in a blissful state of fusion;

getting stuck in the Light side of the self and then we will be dealing with the idealization and autization of the group, the group becomes the only place where they understand and accept, like a kind of sect;

The breath of self (Fordham), when the group enters into a process of opening and closing boundaries, allowing itself to learn new things, to engage with new experiences without fear of disruption, confident in its own strength and reliability. This new experience can include: new theoretical material, a discussion of group members' ideas, or an invited colleague who can serve as a supervisor or lecturer.

However, perhaps these are not paths, but stages in the development of an inspection group.

We often hide our affiliation with a particular group, shielding it from others like a baby from the evil eye. But is it as vulnerable as we think? Or is it a matter of a special, reverent, and heartfelt relationship with the group?

Question for the audience: In your opinion, how permeable should the group's boundaries be for new members?

And one more question: when a new person comes to a group, it is, of course, thrown back to the very beginning, but does it become a new group?

Taking all these thoughts together, I came to the conclusion that the meaning of the intervision group may be in the embodiment of the new ethics that Neumann spoke about.

In the preface to Neumann's work, Jung notes, "...as the psychotherapist accumulates experience and knowledge of psychic relationships, he loses confidence in knowing exactly what is good and what is bad in each individual case. In order to get to the heart of the problem, which lies in the patient's unique individuality, the psychiatrist must treat him... as an 'other,' a complete stranger. What, then, does 'good' mean? Good for him? Good for me? Good for society? Good for his relatives?" And, of course, all these Jungian "goods" are clearly visible in the work of the intervision group.

I remember one intervision session where five or six completely different answers were given to a given case, each colleague relying on their own perspective and the theory they favored for the case. It was absolutely mind-boggling! But none of the points of view contradicted the others; they were different, some so different that it seemed they had no connection at all, and how could they possibly be about the same person? But they didn't complement each other either. And perhaps at this point one might wonder: which version was correct? Neither.

As Kalsched says , the truth about supervision is "just a fantasy about the client." And in this case, there were five or six fantasies, intertwined in a whimsical pattern, without obscuring one another.

In a private conversation, one colleague called the intervision group the client's dream, I would add, a dream without the dreamer, but for him.

Perhaps our clients unconsciously know that we care for them through supervision, but in supervision the supervisor provides the interpretation, while in intervision the case is filled with associations and visions, the answer comes through the analyst later, sometimes much later after the group.

And it's very difficult to resist getting into an argument while defending your point of view. Or to resist starting to defend yourself when you absolutely feel like you're being attacked, devalued, accused. To maintain the understanding that this is a matter of chance, and everything that happens here and now is about that.

All three pillars of psychoanalysis are at odds in an intervision group: there's no money, meeting times, and even locations are flexible. Only the composition of participants and, hopefully, confidentiality are relatively stable. The group's primary function, for self-sustainment and self-care, is containment.

Adler also writes in the preface to The New Ethics: "Neumann makes almost impossible demands on the individual's personal responsibility. But these demands are addressed to an individual who is in the process of continuous development, and they should be seen as a kind of signpost on the path to the future."

The task of the new ethics is to recognize the deep layers of the psyche, to acknowledge that wild, "vicious, ugly, primitive human predator" within oneself. This is to reestablish a connection with humanity and its history, to discover within oneself the existence of a multitude of prehistoric psychic structures in the form of drives, instincts, primordial images, and symbols. By recognizing the savage as an influential figure in the psyche, the ego reestablishes a vital connection with the earth, with nature.

Neumann (p. 130) “everything that leads to wholeness is ‘good’, everything that leads to division is ‘evil’… even if such a factor is ‘good motive’, ‘collectively approved values’.”

"The individual is an alchemical retort in which the elements existing in the collective are melted and changed... The shadow of the individual is invariably linked with the collective shadow of his group, so that in assimilating his evil, the individual at the same time assimilates a particle of the collective evil.

Unlike scapegoat psychology, in which the individual eliminates their own evil by projecting it onto weaker peers, we now observe the opposite phenomenon—"redemptive suffering." The individual takes personal responsibility for part of the collective evil and neutralizes it by incorporating it into their internal transformation process.

Today, there are more than 15 groups operating in Moscow, and I hope that these groups will develop and new groups will mature and emerge.

And yet, at the end of my talk, I would like to show one image. These are the Eight Immortals—eight saints of the Taoist pantheon, six men and two women—legendary figures who lived in different eras and achieved immortality by comprehending the secrets of nature. They are associated with eight different conditions of life: poverty, wealth, high social status, plebeianism, old age, youth, masculinity, and femininity. In my opinion, this is the symbol of the Intervisor group.

Thank you for being here and thinking with me.

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