Groupicide

When listening to a patient it is usually a matter of semi-automatic signal perception that careful attention should be paid to messages that contain such words as “incidentally,” “however,” “but” and “trivial.” Hours of intellectual dissection may ensue in order to uncover the negating meaning of such words and to discover the hidden meaning sheltered beneath them. This type of probing for the yet unspoken word with its inevitable charge of frightening feelings and thoughts has been the ultimate means of truth seeking since the onset of civilization. Buddha, Socrates, Christ, Spinoza, Dostoevsky, Freud—this is certainly not an all inclusive list of truth seekers but it is an important one, for each seeker proceeded from a like premise. Man cannot know or communicate external reality until he understands himself. Whether one calls it insight, intuition, self-cognition or something else, this congenital, strangely human property of being able to split off part of one's perceptual apparatus to observe the rest is a most remarkable quality.

The childhood curiosity about the body, its parts and how they work, in oneself as well as in others, is somehow transformed during adolescence into an interest in both body and mind. Adolescents are, if only for a brief period of time, intensively interested in such matters as what am I, who am I, what do I really want, what is my purpose here, where am I going from here, what is life, what is my life and how does it relate to others, what do I really want to be? We also know that this adolescent self-searching can be immensely painful both to the young truthseeker and to the authorities in his