Up from Scapegoating: Arthur Coleman (1995)

Vol. 21, #6, April, 1996

Up from Scapegoating: Awakening Consciousness in Groups

Arthur D. Coleman.

(Wilmette, Ill: Chiron Publications, 1995, 168 pp.)

Arthur Coleman is an anomaly among Jungian analysts. In addition to the responsibilities he carries as a faculty member of both the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, he does analytic work, not only with individuals, but with groups. Coleman attributes much of his interest in a group approach to his exposure during his psychiatric residency at the University of California in the early sixties, to the teaching of a dazzling array of leaders in the field of group and systems theory and practice, among them, Fritz Perls, Eric Berne, Virginia Satir and Harry Wilmer.

Initially, his work with groups tended to be more pragmatic, contrasting with his in-depth approach to individuals. Yet gradually, the two roles and two perspectives have grown together. He now describes himself as an “organizational consultant trained in the tradition of Tavistock group relations“ which is “committed to exploring the unconscious of groups.” “I find that the systems of individual and collective ... can (each) be seen and felt as a representative of the other,” Coleman writes, “different lenses through which a more basic organizing consciousness is observed.”

It was “the power of the archetypal group dream” that first led Coleman to explore Jung’s psychology. In the notion of a collective unconscious, “the unconscious in the collective and the collective in the unconscious,” he found a more satisfying explanation than was offered by other theories of the “mythic cornucopia of group life.” Regretfully, in Coleman’s view, Jung’s profound mistrust of collective experience prevented him from offering any insight into the workings of the group.

The overvaluation of individual experience at the cost of group life in Jungian thought is a theme Coleman will return to a number of times in his book.

The task he has set for himself in Up from Scapegoating, he defines in these terms:

I am interested in using Jungian and related depth psychology concepts to explore the nature of the boundary between the individual and the group, without assuming that the individual or individual consciousness is center stage. I am interested in exploring the concept of the group archetype and group complex as fundamental to child and adult development as the ego, shadow, or parental complexes. I am interested in exploring consciousness and the unconscious as both individual and group states, entertaining the idea that individuation is relevant to groups as well as to individuals and that the critical relationship between these two processes is manifested in the archetype of the scapegoat.

The scapegoat is not to be confused with the shadow although collective scapegoating has implications for individual development and shadow resolution. “(T)he scapegoat is a collective creation,” writes Coleman, “a symbolic compromise for many individuals’ negative projections.” It represents the group’s attempt to deal with disparate elements in its push towards wholeness by excluding them or, in psychological language, projecting them. Scapegoats, it should be noted, are not without responsibility in their victimization. “Groups,” Coleman elaborates, “choose their victims well, and most victims have a way of volunteering for the job.”

Not only is group evolution deterred by the presence of scapegoats, but individual members are no less hampered in their integration of shadow projections by scapegoating. It is in the notion of individual responsibility for collective projections and of service to the community at large that Coleman departs from the traditional Jungian outlook. Group life and good causes should not be used as an escape from difficult inner work, he cautions. Yet “(a)s things go in the matter of the unconscious, the more one tries to get away from the group issue, the more power it will gain, as Jung discovered in his painful failed dealings with the Nazis.”

Developing the organ of group consciousness requires of the group consultant a way of perceiving and acting that is not found among most therapists who are uncomfortable when their field of inquiry is extended beyond the individual and the dyad, nor among most organizational consultants who are too pragmatic. In Coleman∂s judgment, the persons who are best suited share an interest and experience in altered states of consciousness, and are comfortable living on the boundary of social units, having been marginalized, without being excluded, from their families of origin.

“Here we enter,” Coleman continues, “areas of experience variously called the imaginal, the shamanic realm, or the collective unconscious.” A special language is needed. “This is the language of the feeling-laden image, the powerful teaching story, the myth that provides a connection and meaning to the group as a whole by transcending the seemingly separate contributions of individual members.” Knowing its story may not alter the course of a group∂s story, but it may discourage the group from taking action, such as scapegoating, that does not serve its development.

The myths that groups embody reflect the way they learn and grow. In his study of groups and societies, Coleman has identified three central myths in an ascending order of maturation-the scapegoat, the island, and the Round Table.

The scapegoat with “its Janus twin, the myth of the messiah,” is the basis of most of our social institutions-religious, educational, commercial and family. It is also the cause of many of contemporary society∂s ills, among them sexism, racism and family violence. Where the scapegoat exists, the group is never faulted for its problems. They are blamed on an individual or subgroup who must be excluded or sacrificed.

The group myth of the island is a dynamic of isolation and self-sufficiency, Coleman continues. Although internal cohesion and homogeneity of the group are valued, difference is recognized, even encouraged, and integrated into the island collective. The threat to the island community which may assume paranoiac proportions, comes from outside. Again we find the projective devices of the scapegoat mentality. These are mitigated, however, by efforts to integrate shadow elements within the “island.” Examples are to be found in nations such as Switzerland, small towns in middle America, “well-to-do” communities and large corporations.

The third group myth, more vision than reality, is King Arthur∂s Round Table. “I personally find (it) to be most compelling,” writes Coleman, “for its combination of interactively authorized leadership and deeply felt group responsibility and connectedness, as well as its commitment to serve not only Table members but the collective as a whole, a commitment to both task and process which serves both individual and collective psyche.”

In Up from Scapegoating, Arthur Coleman cites several instances within his own Jungian community of San Francisco where individual analysts have been failed by the collective body, owing, as has been said, to a bias beginning with Jung himself against group life. There is another bias, in my view, which also mitigates against the successful evolution of group life and the individual. It is the inferior, in both senses, fourth function of Jungian psychology, extraverted sensation.

Working from the sensation function, differentiated or not, is never less than hard. It requires patience, it takes time and it earns little recognition. Too often, even today, it is “women’s work,” literally and figuratively. Men refuse to accord it the kind of respect it demands, and women out of pity or impatience with the ineptitude of men, continue in their traditional roles.

Yet if we are to achieve the kind of “interactively authorized leadership and deeply felt group responsibility and connectedness” that Coleman writes of in his vision of a group modelled on the Round Table of Arthurian legend, with its “commitment to both task and process which serves both individual and collective psyche,” each of us must exercise our sensation function. To do otherwise is to perpetuate the hierarchically structured organizations and scapegoating mentality of the past.

–Alice Johnston