brianlynchmd.com

[drlynch]

[ "G-F" Refers to the pychohistorical term of "group fantasy"]

Concerning:"Why I Shot My Lamb
And why I want to shoot my neighbor's lamb, too."

I have a view of the kind of focused energy that Harry and Peggy gave to their lamb that the concept of "G-F" completes. We are individuals and part of a group.

How do individuals come to act in such focused ways and why? A very powerful conceptualization is to think of it as a consequence of "disavowal". This is somewhat different than "denial"

Don Nathanson in his work "Shame and Pride" says this of disavowal:

"My field uses words in its own particular way, and we reserve the term denial for the group of situations in which a defense mechanism interferes with our perception of something. The word itself is derived from roots indicating its relation to the idea of saying "no." Denial implies refusal of anything asked for or desired, the assertion that something is untrue, the contradiction of the existence or the reality of a thing. The form of repudiation utilized by Marga­ret is known as disavowal, a more specific term that indicates one's inability to comprehend information that remains unwanted because it triggers unwanted affect.*

In our culture, the most famous example of disavowal appears at the end of the classic film Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler has just rejected a final insincere plea of Scarlett O'Hara, indicating that she is self-centered, greedy, immature, and unable to sustain an adult relationship. Immediately on his departure, Scarlett first recoils in disbelief, acknowledging the importance of his remarks, and then says "I can't think about it now. I'll go crazy. I'll think about it tomorrow." We, the audience, know that what he has said may never cross her mind again, and certainly will never act as information that might help her grow into a better person."

So we simply have to filter out that which is "too much". I always try and emphasize our biological nature and the biological basis for any mental process. We have innate processing systems to filter the stimulus coming into us. One way we do this is through sorting things on the basis of how we, individually, have come to experience things emotionally.

We have limits. It has been posited that we have a certain "channel capacity". Simply put it is hard to listen to two conversations at once, etc. So it is hard to process overwhelming affective input. One way we deal with this is to not to deal with it. Of course, this does not work as the experience has happened and it has happened to our mind-body complex. Energy is never destroyed, just transformed. So overwhelming affect short circuits and never comes into full consciousness but is channeled into some type of behavior.

We all know people like Harry and Peggy and should recognize some level of disavowal and certainly "avoidance" in ourselves. I think about this one sheep as it is "too much" to process the real overwhelming pain that is going on in the world. We all have to do this at some level all the time or we would never get anything done. We can't absorb all the pain around us. But as this is a process that takes place first out of consciousness it is extremely hard if not impossible to break through.

It would seem to me that "G-F" is mainly a coalescing of like mined individuals processing pain in similar ways. Brian
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Why I Shot My Lamb
And why I want to shoot my neighbor's lamb, too.
By Jon Katz
May 4, 2007
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2164538/