New Orleans, Tavistock, and 9/11
Oona Metz, LICSW, CGP

Last November, the Red Cross contacted me to ask if I would be willing to run a group pro bono for family members of people who had died on September 11th. I was honored and immediately replied that I would. Giving up an evening hour seemed a small price to pay for the opportunity to help people in a concrete way. Running this group has been a heartbreaking, yet wonderful, experience for me, and I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity.

Two months later, I learned that thanks to a New York Times Foundation grant, AGPA would be giving out 100 scholarships for the Annual Meeting in New Orleans for clinicians who had volunteered to provide service to those impacted by the events of September 11th. Suddenly, a conference that was beyond my financial reach was actually feasible, so I jumped at the chance.

I flew from Boston with a good friend who is also a group therapist, and we had constant reminders of September 11th. My friend had her nail clippers confiscated and got a stern warning from the security forces at Logan Airport, and our bags and identities were checked and rechecked. Also, our original flight was rerouted due to snow in Cleveland. Luckily, we group therapists adapt well to changes and surprises and seem to have an uncanny knack of making the best of any situation, so we fared just fine.

We arrived in New Orleans (my first time ever) very late on Tuesday night and we got our room key. Oops! Someone else was fast asleep in one of the beds. Granted, this was more upsetting to the sleeping hotel guest than to us, but we found it a bit unsettling.

I had signed up for a two-day Institute entitled The Tavistock Small Group, which I kept thinking I might switch out of once I had a chance to reread the catalogue, but it was late and we were tired. When I told people that I would be in a Tavistock Group I was met with responses like, "Oooohhhhh," or "Well, you'll be in for a treat," or "Prepare to be angry." I had attended a three-hour Tavistock workshop several years ago so I wasn't completely in the dark, but I wasn't sure what two whole days of this model would bring.

Despite all the warnings, I settled into the Institute and was informed by the "consultants" (who are not "leaders" or "therapists") that the group's purpose was to learn about leadership and authority. In keeping with the model, the consultants only made group-as-a-whole comments and refused to answer direct questions from individual members. They did not make eye contact, nor give positive feedback. They primarily redirected us when we got off task, which seemed fairly often.

On the second day, I watched the frustration mounting in the room. Jaws clenched and voices filled with tension. As a society, we expect leadership to come from somewhere. In this Institute, the consultants let us struggle with learning about authority by providing no directives, no explanations, and no guidance. It was the kind of experience that makes it easy to understand what happened in "Lord of the Flies." At some point, my mind wandered to the group I have been leading for people who lost relatives on September 11th. "Who did this?" demanded one grieving mother early on. Implicit in her question was "Who is going to make this better?" In their search for answers, the members of my group look both inside and outside. Several of them refuse to watch television news, but others can't help it. The news makes them wonder who is in charge of the world these days. Is the President in control? Are we the good guys? Is some evil hand setting the course? Why does tragedy strike people who are good, generous, kind? Will we ever heal? The members of my group are frustrated and frightened because in huge and fundamental ways that they never imagined, their assumptions about the world have been shattered. In addition to grieving, they don't know who is leading, who is in charge. Watching my colleagues struggle with a void of leadership in the controlled environment of the Tavistock group, I felt that I could better understand my group members' feelings.

I left the Institute feeling intellectually and emotionally inspired, as well as eager to experience the culinary delights that New Orleans had to offer. That night I attended the Northeastern Society for Group Psychotherapy dinner at the fabulous Bayona Restaurant, where 35 of us Boston folks squeezed into a private room for a delicious meal and our Annual (Dirty) Joke Telling Contest. Competition was fierce. Group therapists can really be a raunchy bunch!

Friday I decided to take a break from the Conference and explore New Orleans. Since it was pouring rain, I opted for a trolley ride through the Garden District, where I developed a bad case of house envy. The architecture in New Orleans is magnificent-beautiful houses and wonderful gardens. After the trolley ride, I took a Swamp Tour in a covered boat and saw, among other things, five alligators, several nutria (beaver-muskrat like rodents), and two wild blue herons. After taking a day off, I was refreshed and ready to get back to the Conference on Saturday.

I chose an all-day workshop entitled "Keeping Excitement Alive in the Therapist and Therapy." The workshop included didactic material, as well as an experiential component. I learned about redecision therapy and how it works, and had a chance to reconnect with some old friends who were also attending the workshop.

As I packed my bags on Saturday night, I reflected on my time at the Annual Meeting. It was a perfect mix of learning and playing, thinking and feeling, exploring inside and outside, meeting new and old friends, all in a place as exciting and beautiful as New Orleans. My experience there renewed my belief that we must help each other in whatever ways we can, both big and small. Volunteering to run a group for the Red Cross has given me so much to be thankful for, and now I can include my AGPA Conference experience in that long list.

This article was printed in the June/July 2002 issue of The Group Circle.