Evening with a "T" Group
Clemens, Walter C. Jr.
THE FIRST SPARKS had already been struck when I arrived five minutes late for the initial session of a T group,* composed of faculty and staff at a university in Boston. Each member was...
...Today I was very incoherent in my lecture...
...Did that comment hurt you," the trainer asked George, "or the other angry remarks of the last few minutes...
...Next week is the protest strike...
...For George, persons (even he himself) were not as important as causes and movements...
...Or to this university...
...No," George replied...
...With this the priest turned to a woman in her early twenties, who was sitting in the corner...
...another girl who didn't like defining persons with labels...
...If we knew more about the internal workings of such people, we would be better able to understand how their struggle for noble ideals often comes to be undermined and even transformed, with the tactics of the Left gravitating toward those of the extreme Right...
...I didn't pay very much for these sessions, but I want to get my own money's worth, figuratively speaking...
...I wonder whether it's worth my time to be here," George mused...
...Indeed, it looked as though these rejoinders left him unruffled...
...THE FIRST SPARKS had already been struck when I arrived five minutes late for the initial session of a T group,* composed of faculty and staff at a university in Boston...
...I finished my Ph.D...
...Several of the group protested that George had no right to make judgment on how Shirley, the black girl, should spend her time, or what her values should be...
...1970, I was reminded, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin, a man who accomplished a great deal to change the objects around him, but at terrific costs to the subjects...
...But she did not want to let this get in the way of her relations with other people...
...While many persons in the NOTEBOOK forefront of radical movements may be quite different from George, one may wonder how many might share his implicit prescription: the movement above the individual, the end above the means...
...Told of its overall thrust, she replied that she couldn't personalize it, because she had always gone to good universities, and just didn't believe that she was intellectually inferior...
...After George and several others identified themselves as teachers, one fellow in a black turtle-neck sweater announced he was a priest...
...George, however, cut him short...
...a black girl who believed in smallgroup dynamics as well as mass demonstrations...
...It was early in our meeting, when you said that you were sitting here with your elbows and hands high, supporting your head, even though inside you were nervous, and wanted to keep your arms folded and tucked into your stomach...
...She, like several other educators in the group, had not heard of the Jensen thesis...
...The most callous of the group and the most offhand in his comments about others, he also seemed to be able to take it in return...
...Perhaps," George replied...
...I just don't see how you have the right to spend your time in here trying to get along with a bunch of whites...
...After some further exchange, George turned to the priest...
...by idealism or egocentrism...
...When I talk about familiar ideas I come across better, but today I was trying to discuss something new to me, and lost my grip...
...Or to this group...
...Many politically active persons are driven by some compelling inner force, a sense of mission or inadequacy...
...Some days are good, but some are bad...
...This racial thing is a hangup for everyone, and we might as well admit it from the beginning...
...sensitivity training in human relations...
...I'll be marching," George said...
...You have a similar problem," he asserted, "because you're black...
...For his omelet he found it possible and desirable to exclude almost half the persons in our room in the course of Iess than two hours: a priest who was potentially too dogmatic or otherworldly...
...We may not be much more than whatever role we play...
...No, we can't," another member replied...
...Regular mail will, as a rule, be adequate and more convenient...
...On the other hand, a breath or two later, George declared that he was opposed to all kinds of father figures (a sentiment shared by many in the group), and did not want the trainer to offer "directions" but—at most—"analysis...
...George, apparently, feared that if the discussion leader came too close, he would not be so effective as a trainer...
...With time, I suppose, George could have found reason to exclude others from his faction of true believers...
...I am an individual," * "T" is for "training...
...Are you trying to be one of the group...
...I think you are rationalizing something else...
...I don't believe what you are saying," a man told George...
...You exaggerate the differences between us...
...I see that there is going to be some trouble between us...
...the trainer asked...
...His attempted exclusion of the trainer, a kind, white-haired man, struck many as brutal—not to say contradictory, since he also wanted him to be neither a father figure nor a member of the group...
...I'm still going to march," George said...
...she said, "a thinking person different from all others, and that is more important than whatever job or profession I have...
...I don't want you to be a member...
...To this, George responded with some passion: "I've just come from Cornell University where I have seen how blacks have accomplished a great deal working together...
...But I'm not irrelevant to this society," the priest practically shouted back at him...
...One of the main reasons why he came to the T group, George said, was to improve his ability in communicating especially with undergraduates...
...As I entered, a good-looking, husky, blond man in his late twenties was talking...
...Now THE TALK VEERED OFF in several directions, which the discussion leader started to sift, so as to indicate some possible options for continuing the meeting...
...George, like Lenin, might agree with the proposition: one has to break eggs to make an omelet...
...To Our Contributors In sending manuscripts, letters, and other material, please do not use special delivery unless requested...
...His efforts, one lady suggested, didn't do much good, since she had a stereotype of the avantgarde priest who might well turn out to be a hypocrite beneath his veneer of being a good guy...
...The trainer at this moment raised a question: "Do you remember, George, when you really came across and were coherent for us...
...And be sure to keep a carbon o/ all manuscripts...
...I think you overdo it," he said...
...That was being intellectual, but it also concerned what was going on inside this room, and inside yourself...
...He replied that he doubted whether—at a time like this—anyone should be sitting around in what amounted to group therapy, worrying about private anxieties, when so much needed to be done on the outside...
...and a humane discussion leader whom George could pillory either way—for being too much a peer or too much a leader...
...NOTEBOOK "That may be all right for you," one middleaged redhead declared, "but you can't judge for us...
...I don't know what it will be or what will cause it...
...Not to Boston...
...But I feel that there is something that will cause conflict between us...
...A new voice came in...
...True, she was now wearing an Afro hair style, because she wanted to affirm her negritude...
...in psychology last year," George said, "so this is my first year of teaching...
...It seems picayune to be discussing our little problems when the big world out there needs us...
...Others commented on how the priest seemed to go to special lengths to break out of whatever stereotype people might use to cast clerics...
...This provoked a girl sitting next to George to say that she was against introducing oneself with the use of labels...
...or some complex mixture of these and other apparent opposites...
...The black girl, however, said that most of her associations were with whites...
...he demanded to know...
...George, however, strongly disagreed...
...Shall we meet again next week...
...But when the priest said that he would also be marching, George declared: "Religion and priests are irrelevant to our society...
...I tried to explain in class the Jensen articles about the inherited IQ levels of blacks, but I got lost...
...Each member was telling something about himself...
...Again, the group turned against George...
Vol. 18 • August 1971 • No. 4
