Chapter Nine – Fraser House Transitionary
Processes
INTRODUCTION
This chapter
looks at Fraser House small group process and the many other change processes
evolved at Fraser House. Margaret Mead’s visit is discussed and Neville’s
adaptation of Keyline to Cultural Keyline is analysed.
SOCIAL
CATEGORY BASED SMALL GROUP THERAPY
Just like Big Group, Small Groups
were run like meetings. Typically, one staff person ran the Small Group and
another staff person was a process observer, on-sider and trainee. Small Groups
were mainly conducted by the nurses, with some groups being lead by medical
officers, the social worker, and the chaplain. The chaplain ran some spiritual
groups at Fraser House. The Fraser House Handbook specifies the nurse therapist
role in Small Groups (refer Appendices 7 & 8):
The role
of the Small Group therapist and observer has always been the province of the
nurse in Fraser House, and represents part of the rise in therapeutic status.
Nurses have become therapists in their own right.
The first
essential in taking a group is to see it as a meeting, and like all meetings,
there is a need for a chairman to conduct affairs and keep issues to the point.
The
initial function of the therapist is to see that the group functions as a group
(Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 4, p. 18).
The Handbook then gives detailed
specifying of group process. Sections of the Handbook on the Nurses Roles and
Big Group process are shown in Appendices 7 and 8.
Small groups were held from 11 AM
to 12 Noon after a half hour refreshment break following big group. They were
preceded by the staff discussion over morning tea. After evening Big Group and
a similar thirty-minute staff discussion period, Small Groups were run from 8
PM to 9 PM. During the staff discussion, patients and visitors had an informal
morning tea together separate from the staff. All groups and the refreshment
break ran strictly to time. Another staff discussion meeting took place after
Small Groups to ensure all staff was well briefed on unfolding contexts.
In an April 2003 email Phil Chilmaid wrote:
There were several ways to follow
up progress and issues: inter-staff verbal exchange at shift change, ward
report books, patients’ progress notes, and at various times, small group
report books, and a large sheet of butchers paper ruled up with boxes for all
the weeks programs and events so staff could come in after a gap or next shift
and follow themes and developments.
Generally,
nearly all the outpatients (typically, friends, workmates and relatives of
patients) attending Big Group stayed and were allocated to the various Small
Groups in both the morning and evening sessions. It was expected that
outpatients attend both Big and Small Groups. There were ten or more concurrent
Small Groups typically made up of between 8 to 12 people, or more per group.
Drawing 1 A Sketch of a Fraser House Small Group by Harry
Campbell
The above illustration by "Sun" artist
Harry Campbell of patients at Fraser House was published in The Sun Newspaper,
17 July 1963, p.28 [Also included in Neville’s News clippings (Various
Newspaper Journalists 1959-1974, p. 33-34)].
Recall that upon Tikopia there was constant linking
within and between people of differing generations, gender, clan, village,
locality, status (chief/non-chief families) and occupation, that is, between
differing sociological categories. Similarly, Neville cleaved Fraser House
family-friendship networks and inter-patient factions by sociological category.
Neville’s aim was to create self-organizing communal
living, which may impact upon and create shifts away from isolation and
destructive cleavage, or make functional cleavage in entangled pathological
networks.
In
supporting mad and bad people with their dysfunctional family-friendship
networks live well with each other, Neville’s view was that one of the primary
healing processes that was both structured into and continually and pervasively
at work within Fraser House, was the day-to-day lived-life dynamic healing
interplay of social cleaving and unifying processes – the same processes that
have been discussed in talking about Tikopia. Neville would set up scope for
micro-experiences creating very strong forces cleaving pathological
entanglements, as well as forces forging functional bonds within and between
people. Typically, patients arrived with a very small family-friendship
network.
Both the sociological category and the composition of
small groups varied daily. All the small groups at any one time were based on
the same category.
The social categories were:
(i)
age
(ii)
married/single status
(iii)
locality
(iv)
kinship
(v)
social order (manual, clerical, or
semi-professional/professional) and
(vi)
age and sex.
Friday’s
Small Groups were made up according to both age and sex for both staff and
patients. This was the one exception to the non-segregation policy. Often
inter-generational issues, including sexual abuse issues, were the focus of
these Friday groups.
People in pathological social networks would be all
together with everyone else in Big Group. However, because of the
continual changing composition in small groups, the members of these
pathological networks were regularly split up (cleavered) for the small group
sessions. Age grading was deemed very important, as it is one of the basic
divisions in society. Neville told me (July 1998) that the thinking was that
age grading sets a context for the production of personality changes to prepare
the client for life outside Fraser House. Age grading also allowed space for
sorting out inter-generation pathology that was very prevalent. For example,
Appendix 13 contains a note that at one time the Canteen was staffed only by
people under twenty years of age. This would have created scope for sustained
inter-generational relating with suppliers and customers.
Because of the number of
categories, any visitor coming regularly on certain days of the week would find
that they would be attending groups based on differing categories. For the
small groups based on locality,
After a time at Fraser House these
individual patient family/friendship networks would expand to have members with
cross-links to other patient’s networks, and with a continual changing Unit
population with overlap in stays, these nested patient-networks became very
extensive. As well, all these people had Fraser House experience in common, and
a common set of mutual support skills. The critical role of locality and
Neville’s use of locality in this increase in the size and functionality of
patient’s social networks is entirely resonant with Indigenous links to place,
and the significance of place and placeform in Keyline.
CHILD-PARENT PLAYGROUPS
Webb and Bruen (1968) wrote up
research relating to the first 13 weeks of Multiple Child-Parent Therapy in
Fraser House – called by some, ‘the mad hour’. Median attendance was 15 parents
and sixteen children (aged 14 and under). This therapy was held in the same
room as Big Group. All chairs were removed and ‘free play’ items were provided
- including saucepans, games, balls, clothes as well as chalk and a blackboard.
Attendance for parents and their children under 14 was compulsory and doors
were looked to prevent people leaving; although parents with unproblematic
relations with young infants were not required to bring them. Outpatients
visiting Fraser House with children under 14 also attended the parent-child
groups. As with other groups at Fraser House, there was a spread of diagnostic
categories[1]
among the people attending, as well as a spread of under-actives/over-actives
and the under-controlled/over-controlled (Bruen Dec, 2005).
The first half hour was a free period. Parents asked
what they were supposed to do. The only instruction was ‘parents are free to
play with or discipline their children as they see fit’. Staff were told that
during the free period they were to observe but not intervene unless physical
damage seemed imminent. Staff could move around and talk to parents or play
with children; however, staff were not to organize anything.
In the first few weeks these groups were extremely
noisy, rowdy and stressful for parents, staff and children alike, especially
the free period where staff were almost as overwhelmed as the parents.
The second half hour was usually structured with
finger painting or routine group therapy. The third half hour was a reporting
session. After that session the attendees were divided into three groups run by
staff - parents (one hour session), children 8-14 (one hour session) and
younger children (half hour session). The half hour with the younger children
was described as ‘utter chaos’. There was then a final reporting session for
staff for a half hour.
Initially, nearly all parents expressed considerable
hostility towards the group and towards the staff who set up the group. During
subsequent groups, parents grudging acknowledged that children enjoyed it. In
an email exchange Bruen stated (December 2005) that:
Even
having parents become hostile towards us succeeded in bringing them closer to
their children.
The free period was originally an arena for staff to
watch interactions that emerged. Initially parents were unable and unwilling to
go near or engage with their children – they were emotional strangers. ‘Getting
together’ as a family was a rare event in these people’s lives.
For six weeks the group was a provoking agent. After
six weeks parents grudgingly admitted that the children enjoyed the sessions
(Webb & Bruen, 1968, p. 52). After 9 weeks, successful whole family
discussions were starting. Parents began playing with each other and play was
being organised by parents with and between whole family groups. Whole families
began to get together and enjoy each other’s company. A major therapeutic role
of the groups was having parents showing pleasure and amazement in having for
the first time their children approaching them to play with them, and if
parents did this, that it would not have disastrous consequences.
During the thirteen weeks covered in the Web-Bruen
research, the attendees were also attending Big and Small Groups, and
discussion about the Child-Parent Groups was often raised in both of those
forums.
Terry O’Neill used to facilitate
this upstairs child-play segment as a volunteer psychologist after Warrick
Bruen left. (I received my counselling skills training from Terry in the late
Seventies.) Terry told me (Oct 1998) that on his first evening alone with the
children (8-14), so much emotional energy had been generated during the first
segment, ‘playing’ with their parents, that the nature of the frenzied play
upstairs was scary. Some of the older children were kicking a soccer ball round
like a deadly missile. Everyone had to be super alert not to get his or her
head knocked off. Terry said (Oct 1998) that having a number of disturbed
children in play therapy in these evening sessions stretched his skills to their
limit.
The substantial change towards good parent-child
relations during free play in these child-parent groups is another example of
‘provoking’ or ‘perturbing’ the families and tapping into functional self-organizing
aspects in the context of all of the other Fraser House changework.
INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
When deemed appropriate,
face-to-face therapy between two patients, a patient and a nurse, or a patient
and a doctor was held. Even in this individual therapy, the central focus was
inter-patient relationships. Encouragement was continually given to ‘bring it
up in the group’.
While it was recognized that
during some crisis times a patient may need support by a doctor or nurse, most
face-to-face therapy was informally between patient and patient as they went
about everyday life, with the wider community always a background.
RESEARCH AS THERAPY
Neville
commenced his postgraduate diploma in sociology shortly after Fraser House
started and completed it in 1963. Neville spoke (July 1998) of Fraser House
being an informal Post Graduate Research Institute, and of the Unit being the
most advanced Social Research Institute in Australia.
Neville had pointed out to me that Franz Alexander
had observed the potential for healing of the caring relationship between
Freudian analysts and patients (Alexander
1961).
Similarly, Elton Mayo (Trahair
1984)
had found in the Hawthorne experiments amongst workers in the early part of
this century, that the change component was not so much the various
‘treatments’ of the research - rather that it was that the researchers were
acknowledging the workers’ dignity and worth and showing an interest in them.
Change was linked to the emotional experience of being research subjects.
Similarly to Mayo’s work, Fraser House patients and staff were the focus of
continual research by Fraser House researchers and the outside research team headed
up by Alfred Clark. Patients were being continually asked to reflect on
themselves, other patients, other staff, Big Groups, Small Groups and on every
aspect of Fraser House and aspects of wider society. Through all of the
research, patients learned about the difference between quantitative and
qualitative research as well as about the notions ‘validity’, ‘reliability
testing’ and ‘trustworthiness’, and how these are very useful notions as part
of living in a modern community, especially one with extensive pathology.
Patients also became involved in both qualitative and quantitative research
data gathering as well as discussing the results and implications of the
research.
During 1963-1966, research by nurses in Fraser House
was supervised by Neville (Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 69). Neville
gave preliminary training to nurses in research methods and also trained the
social worker in research methods. At one time Neville arranged a Fraser House
Research workshop with 25 associated projects (Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 86-99). As an
example, Fraser House residents were involved in rating patient participation
and improvement (refer Appendix 16). In answering, patients were not only being
encouraged to notice healing micro-experiences (experience of little bits of
behaviour that may contribute to healing), they were receiving the strong
positive emotional experience that what they thought and felt about things
mattered and was of value. Having come from conflicted family environments
where contradictory communication (Laing and
Esterson 1964) was the norm, doing reality
testing and checking the practical usefulness, validity and relevance of their
observations was valuable. Patients and outpatients would start discussing a
very diverse range of topics and in the processes evolve their capacities in
forming, expressing and evaluating opinions and making insightful and useful
observations about human interaction.
VALUES RESEARCH
Another example of treating
patients with respect, dignity and worth was asking them to explore and give
answers to questions about their value systems. Neville carried out extensive
values research (1965a) based on
the concepts of Florence Kluckhohn (1953, p.
342-357).
A list of the questions that were asked in Neville’s Values Research is in
Appendix 17. This Fraser House values research was followed up by
questionnaires being completed by over 2,000 people in Sydney, Melbourne and
Brisbane - the three largest cities in
In Neville’s view (Dec 1993), substantially shifting
core values amounts to shifting culture. Neville also stated that at the time,
this values research was, in all probability, the most extensive research on
values that had been done anywhere (Clark and
Yeomans 1969, p. 20-26).
Appendix 18 and 19 lists inventories developed and
used at Fraser House (Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 4, p. 43, Vol. 11). These
inventories enabled the putting together of a holistic psycho-social emotional
mindbody portrait of each patient and outpatient’s whole life, covering
presenting matters, recent past, post-school period, childhood, as well as work
history and recreational activity. This is consistent with the holistic
socio-emotional focus of change at Fraser House. Reflecting these stories back
to patients engaged in reconstituting their unfolding story had functional
value.
Despite being extremely busy with
every aspect of Fraser House and its links into the community, Neville was very
active in research and writing up papers. He was an active presenter at
conferences and other professional meetings. Appendix 20 contains three Tables
(A, B, and C) listing fifty seven of the extensive body of Neville’s research
papers and monographs mentioned in his collected papers in the Mitchell
Library. Many are undated though come from the 1959-1965 period.
Group and crowd behaviour during big groups was a
constant research theme. For example, in a filenote called ‘Colindivism’ (1965a) Neville
describes the interactive nature of collective and individual behaviour in
Fraser House.
Patients knew that all manner of
data was being collected about them relating to demographic and socio-economic
data, length of stay, participation by their friends and relatives and the
like. Research outcomes were discussed with patients.
Within
a connexity based Cultural Keyline frame it made absolute sense to connect
patients to the interconnection and inter-dependence of aspects of society at
large. Psychiatric patients and ex-prisoners were asked their attitudes towards
overseas trade with SE Asia, or about landscape planning and urban renewal in
Neville
told me (Dec 1993, July 1998) that a process he used to protect Fraser House
was that a number of research workers from
Bruen told me (Aug, 1999) that
Margaret Cockett made sociograms of networks within Fraser House using the
concepts of ‘power’, ‘opinion leaders’, ‘leaders’ and ‘influence’. The conducting
of this research was later confirmed by Margaret Cockett (April 1999).
Regrettably, this research was among the materials discarded by
Sociogram based research in Fraser
House recognised that P.A.’s three primary landforms (main ridge, primary ridge
and primary valley) embody horizontal unity in the context of vertical cleavage
though no reference to Keyline is made. Neville and other researchers at Fraser
House used the above notions of horizontal unity in the face of
vertical cleavage in doing sociogram research into the friendship patterns
among staff and patients in Fraser house (Clark and
Yeomans 1969, p. 131). A
‘glimpse’ of Neville’s use of Tikopia’s cleavered unities is in Clark and
Yeomans’ book, ‘Fraser House’ under the subheading ‘Cleavages’ relating to the
sociogram research (Clark and
Yeomans 1969, p. 131). Not
surprising, this sociogram based research showed that Neville was only staff
member:
with a
link, by means of a mutual tie, into the genotypical informal social
structure…. (Clark and
Yeomans 1969, p. 131).
Sociogram 1 Sociogram Showing the Friend Network in
Fraser House.
This finding is fully in keeping
with Neville’s notion of devolving responsibility and reversing the status quo.
It was also in keeping with Neville’s hands-off though being profoundly and
sensitively linked that he was enabler on the edge of the informal social
structure.
Apart from research as therapy,
Fraser House research served at least two other functions. Firstly, the results
were fed back in to modify the structure, process and action research in the
Unit. For example, the critical and destructive role of extremely dysfunctional
families and friends in holding back patient improvement became clearer to
staff and patients alike from both experience and research over the first three
years. Greater efforts were then made to involve these networks. Secondly, the
research was used to protect the Unit and ensure its survival, at least for a
time.
PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH STUDY GROUP
Neville
set up the Psychiatric Research Study Group on the grounds of the
The
Study Group provided a space where ideas were enthusiastically received and
discussed. Some participants had been finding it hard to get an audience for
their novel ideas within the climate of the universities of the day. The Study
Group was another cultural locality. Anything raised in the Study Group that
seemed to fit the milieu in Fraser House was immediately tested by Neville in
Fraser House. In trying something to see if it worked, Neville spoke (July
1998) of ‘the survival of the fitting’.
At
one time there were 180 members on the Psychiatric Research Study Group mailing
list. Neville wrote that the Study Group:
…represents
every field of the social and behavioural sciences and is the most significant
psycho-social research institute in this State.
The
Psychiatric Research Study Group maintains a central file of research projects
underway throughout NSW and acts in an advisory and critical capacity to anyone
planning a research project’ (Yeomans, N. 1965a, vol. 4, p. 24).
Meetings
were held monthly at first at Fraser House and then elsewhere.
WORK AS THERAPY
The canteen provided one context
for using work as therapy. Another example was the patients winning a contract
to build a
Photo 1 Patients building the Fraser House bowling green in the
Sixties - a photo
from the Sydney Morning Herald (11 April 1962).
The
above photo accompanied an article entitled ‘The Suicide Clinic’.
Photo 2 I took this photo
in June 1999 showing brick retaining wall and
The above photo shows the
Patient
based therapy was offered though the letter from the President of the
Parliamentary Committee (the letter is included as Appendix 11) (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 2, p. 11).
MARGARET MEAD VISITS FRASER HOUSE
The Anthropologist Margaret Mead
visited Fraser House as the Co-Founder (1948) and ex-President (1956/7) of the
World Federation for Mental Health (Brody
2002).
Separate discussions with Margaret Cockett and Neville (Aug, 1999)
cross-confirmed the following material about Mead’s visit. Margaret Cockett
informed me that Margaret Mead was introduced to Fraser House by an
anthropologist friend of Margaret Cockett in the NSW Housing Department who had
told Mead about Fraser House when Mead came to visit her. Cockett told me that
initially Margaret Mead could not believe what she was hearing and came to
Fraser House to check it out for herself. Mead was escorted throughout the day
by Margaret Cockett, the Fraser House anthropologist psychologist. Margaret
Cockett recalled Margaret Mead saying that she was very taken with the concept
of therapeutic community and had visited many such communities in different
places.
Mead very ably conducted the
morning Big Group and ran a small group when she visited Fraser House
(discussion with Neville, April 1999 and Margaret Cockett April 1999). Margaret
Cockett described Mead as being ‘absolutely on the ball’ in the role of leader
of both Big Group and one of the Small Groups. Margaret Mead also took the
regular half hour staff group meeting that followed the Big Group.
A number of senior people from the health department
joined Margaret Mead for lunch where according to Margaret Cockett, Margaret
Mead held court and demonstrated that she was clearly ahead of every one of
them in their respective specialist areas. Margaret Cockett suspects that it
was Margaret Mead’s glowing report to these people in the NSW health
establishment hierarchy that made things just a little easier for Fraser House
for a while. Neville said (April 1999) that at that time Mead visited Fraser
House, the medical and psychiatric profession saw no relevance whatsoever for
anthropology in their professions. Margaret Mead gave the ‘big thumbs up’ to
Fraser House to these Department Heads, ‘heaping praise’ on every aspect of the
Fraser House therapeutic community.
Margaret Mead also chaired the
Psychiatric Research Study Group when she visited Fraser House (Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 68).
Dr. Margaret Mead, world famous
anthropologist who visited Australia last year attended a meeting of the
Psychiatric Research Study Group and also stated that she considered Fraser
House the most advanced unit she had visited anywhere in the world (Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 69).
All of my
informants spoke of the dense holistic inter-related ‘total’ nature of Fraser
House. Neville (Aug 1999) told me that Mead also stated that Fraser House was
the only therapeutic community she had visited that was totally a therapeutic
community in every sense. Cockett, in talking about Mead’s feel for
Fraser House’s totality and completeness said that Mead spoke of Fraser House
as the most total therapeutic community she had ever been to. (Note that the
above sense of ‘total’ differs from Goffman’s use of ‘total’ as a term
describing entities like monasteries, prisons, asylums, and warships that
bracket people off from everyday life. While a ‘total institution’ in Goffman’s
terms (1961), Neville said that Mead was particularly taken with the fact that
important others were required to regularly visit patients in Fraser House, and
that one patient, having a horse as the only ‘important other’ in her life, was
allowed to have the horse tethered grazing on the lawns of the hospital just
outside Fraser House. A few other patients had a cat or a dog as their
‘important other’. I took the photo below in August 2000. It shows Fraser House
through the trees and the grounds outside Fraser House where the horse grazed.
Photo 3 A photo I took
in June 1999 of the place where the horse grazed at Fraser House
Reading
the Fraser House Committee Structure (Appendix 13) may give a further feel for
the totality and completeness that Margaret Mead, spoke of when describing
Fraser House as the most Total therapeutic community she had ever been
to.
Margaret
Cockett (Aug, 1999) and Neville (Dec 1993 and August 1999) confirmed that Mead
also stated that Fraser House was the only therapeutic community that
was totally a therapeutic community in every sense. Similarly, in
the forward of Clark and Yeomans’ book about Fraser House, Maxwell Jones, the
pioneer of therapeutic communities in the
Throughout
the book is the constant awareness that, given such a carefully worked-out
structure, evolution is an inevitable consequence
(Clark and
Yeomans 1969, Forward, p. vi).
It is this
‘total’ aspect of Fraser House (and
Recall
that Maxwell Jones had said of therapeutic community in the
It does
not amount to a treatment methodology in its own right but complements other
recognized psychotherapeutic and pharmacological treatment procedures (Jones
1969, p. 86).
Neville
had created a total therapeutic community where every aspect was
transformative.
To
continue the theme of setting up inevitable change in self-organising systems,
I will now detail my findings about Cultural Keyline.
CULTURAL
KEYLINE
Margaret
Cockett (Sept 2004) told me that Neville and everyone connected at Fraser House
where constantly trying out new things. Everything was extremely fluid. Someone
would come up with an idea and it would be immediately woven in. In Margaret’s
view Neville tended to make connections between some
new thing they were trying out and what they did on the farm. It seems that Neville’s sensing of what
Keyline adapted to the psychosocial may be, emerged out of Fraser House’s
dynamic eclectic process rather than being an intellectual exercise imposed on
Fraser House. Theory emerged from theorein (pretheoretical theorising) (Pelz 1974) and process.
Neville
first mentioned the term ‘Cultural Keyline to me when I was staying with him in
Yungaburra in December 1991 and when I asked Neville to expand on what he meant
by the term, Neville changed the topic saying that I already knew all about it.
I was puzzled by this. I again asked in December 1993 and he told me to read
all of his father’s Keyline writings and then I may discover Cultural Keyline
in my own actions. After his death in May 2000 I realised that Neville was
aware that through his subtle modelling of his behaviour in my presence, I had
absorbed aspects of his way and regularly used Cultural Keyline in my action
research in his presence, even though I did not know my actions were consistent
with Cultural Keyline. I sense that Neville’s view was that head knowing alone
will limit understanding of Cultural Keyline – understanding has to emerge
through the embodiment of values-based relevant experience.
My sense of ‘Cultural Keyline’ is
that it is of a matching form to the enabling interaction the Yeomans family
had with all of the myriad interlinking aspects of the soil, air, water,
nutrient, and warmth on their farms. Every aspect of the design and redesign of
the Yeomans’ action on their farms was pervasively integrated. It was, to use
Neville’s phrase again, the ‘survival of the fitting’. Neville and his father
knew that it was virtually impossible to control a living system. Neville and
his father keenly attended to how the natural systems ‘worked’ on the farm and
designed their interventions to maximally fit with nature and allow nature’s
emergent properties to do what they do so well. P.A. and sons Neville and Allan
(and later, Neville’s younger brother Ken) would give the soil subtle enabling
interventions and perturbations, and then they would let the system
self-organize towards thriving. Living systems have
self-organization as an inherent property (for example, the ‘informal
organization’ and the ‘grapevine’ in bureaucracies).
Neville
knew (June 1998) that living systems can reach a point, called in complexity
theory (Capra 1997, p. 167), a bifurcation point, where there
can be a sudden system negentropy (the opposite of entropy) leading to the
potential and emergence of sudden whole system transcending transition to
higher and more unpredictable complexity and improved performance. The Yeomans had
first-hand experience of how perturbation and bifurcation work in nature in
producing sudden whole system shift to a new order of higher complexity (Capra 1997, p.28).
The massive increase in detritivores in their soil was one example. In the
Fraser House context two examples of a birfurcation point was firstly,
when Neville went berserk in Big Group such that the Unit survived well in his
absence (Appendix 14), and secondly was when Neville geared up the Frazer House
community to support the 12 year old girl (Appendix 15). In both cases Neville
created a rich context where the Fraser House social system jumped to a far
richer mode of interacting. In each of these cases Neville’s action was
consistent with Pascale, Millemann and Gioja’s (2000) behavioural pattern in their book
‘Surfing the Edge of Chaos’:
Amplify survival threats and
foster disequilibrium to evoke fresh ideas and innovative responses (2000, p.
28.)
Creating
contexts rich with potential for self-organising negentropy is very different
to laissez faire management where there is a hands-off approach.
Neville
applied these Keyline understandings in evolving Fraser House. In mirroring
Indigenous way, Fraser House was about fostering respectful co-existence and
meaningfully surviving well together. Everything Neville did in Fraser House
was designed to fit with everything else - naturally. Everything complemented
and supported other aspects. Things that did not work were fine-tuned or
discarded. Issues that arose in one context were resolved, or passed on to
other contexts. In Fraser House, what worked (as well as problematic aspects)
was discussed with everyone in Big Group. Issues not resolved in Big Group were
passed on to Small Groups and vice versa. Issues within Committees were
resolved, or passed on to Parliamentary Committee. Issues within the
Parliamentary Committee were reviewed by the Pilot Committee. This pervasive
inter-connected weaving of everything with everything is why Margaret Mead said
it was the most complete therapeutic community she had ever seen, and
why Maxwell Jones said that participants in Fraser House had to change.
Subsequent
to Neville’s death in May 2000, l identified four non-linear interconnected
inter-related aspects of Cultural Keyline:
1.
Attending and sensing self organising, emergence, and
Keypoints conducive to coherence within social contexts
2.
Forming cultural locality (people connecting together
connecting to place)
3.
Strategic design and context-guided perturbing of the
social topography
4.
Sensing and attending to the natural social system
self-organising in response to the perturbing and monitoring outcomes
Keyline is a model of
sustainable agriculture. Cultural Keyline is model for sustaining wellbeing
based human inter-acting and inter-relating. As Keyline fosters emergent farm
potential, Cultural Keyline is a rich way of fostering emergent and thriving
potential in social systems. A short summary of my findings relating to
Neville’s Cultural Keyline process in action follows. The following process is
non-linear with connexity between all of the following aspects. Some repetition
reflects fractal aspects, for example between sensing and designing.
Attending and
Sensing
·
Attending very closely to the features of the ‘social
landscape’ in unfolding social contexts
·
Being open, surrendering and receiving all aspects of
the social topography - sensing the information, meanings and the issues in the
forms, and not laying on it any of our own projections
·
Sensing each person, family, network and community as
a self-organizing living system
·
Sensing the connexity (interconnected
interdependence) in the psycho-social topography
·
Sensing the free energy and context role-specific
functional behaviours in everyone involved
·
Sensing the information distributed throughout the
system and recognising how this information is concentrated and merges at the
Keypoint – information about mood, theme, value, interaction and unfolding
outcomes - sensing their inter-connectedness within the whole of what is
happening.
·
Sensing the fractal Cultural Keypoint(s) in the
unfolding context - where these energies and information (mood, theme, value
and interaction) meet and concentrate (just like the fractal quality of
discrete information distributed in each of the three land forms all meeting at
the Keypoint), and have emergent potential for social cohesion – and sensing
the connecting theme(s) that merge(s) from the concentrate – the theme(s) that
has/have potent significance for all in the unfolding context (whether
participants realise it or not).
Forming Cultural
Locality
·
Interacting with the surrounding locality as a living
system
·
Offering to support people as a resource
·
Enabling cultural locality – first the gathering,
then the nexus towards community and placemaking
·
Enabling and fostering self-help and mutual-help
·
Enabling others to tap into personal and
interpersonal psychosocial and other resources
Strategic Design
and Context-guided Perturbing of the Social Topography
- Unfolding contexts telling us what to do next
- Enabling contexts where resonant people self organize in mutual
help
- Fostering and enabling resonant grassroots networking in the region
·
In the unfolding context, sensing the
inter-connectedness of mood, theme, value and interaction; sensing the Keypoint
where these meet and concentrate – and sensing the connecting theme that merges
from the distributed information
·
Engaging in context appropriate perturbing at the
Keypoint – from gentle to full on perturbing - to evoke Keylines of interaction
on the theme and associated mood, values and interactions
·
Taking the time and ensuring the sustaining of the
Keypoint theme along the Keyline till the turning point (potentially towards a
new Keypoint theme), and then recognizing and shifting to that Keypoint theme.
If no Keypoint theme emerges, then working with the free energy, or
·
Using the Keylines of interaction as a guide to
further engaging in action
Leaving Nature to
do the Work
·
Sensing and attending to the natural social system
self-organising in response to the perturbing
·
Honouring, respecting, holding and leaving free the
space and place for individual, family-friendship networks and community
re-constituting to happen
·
Having faith in the thriving of living systems and
knowing when to leave it to self-organize and naturally do what it knows best -
towards constituting/re-constituting wellness
A
case study of Neville using Cultural Keyline is Appendix 14 (Going Berserk).
Neville
and his father were never into laissez faire management – having a non-involved
hands-off approach. When Neville travelled overseas he left in place a system
operating on the above four Cultural Keyline aspects. A group of people had
taken on his enabling role that entailed context specific tight control and
freedom and pervasive attending and sensing.
Neville
turned himself into a Keypoint. Metaphorically Neville placed himself in
society at the junction of three forms of social topography – the psychiatric
bureaucracy, the media, and the marginal fringe from the backwards of asylums
and no-parole prisoners. Within three years, Fraser House marginal residents
were training trainee psychiatrists in the new area of community psychiatry.
Neville became a zoologist, doctor, psychiatrist, sociologist, psychologist,
and barrister. Placing all this academic reflection within himself he placed
himself as head of the psychiatric study group associated with Fraser House. He
positioned the Study Group linked to Fraser House as the premier social
research facility in
My
understanding of the links between the farms and Fraser House are set out below:
No
one I interviewed for this research knew anything about Cultural Keyline;
Neville had never mentioned the term to them. While Neville never specifically
mentioned Cultural Keyline in any of his writings, the concept is implicit in
many of them; as an example, refer Appendix 4 – Neville’s forward to his
father’s book ‘
Cultural
Keyline themes implicit in Neville’s Forward:
·
Change in values
·
Bio-social survival depends upon harmonious working
with nature
· Australia
·
Landscape must be husbanded with loving care
·
The beauty and freedom of personal space depends upon
caring for the integrity of all our environment
Yeomans’ Farms |
Fraser House |
|
·
Keyline ·
P. A. Yeomans and Sons ·
Host: P.A’s
wife Rita ·
Topography ·
Three Landforms ·
Keypoint ·
Keylines ·
Making functional use of Connexity ·
Transitional organic community ·
Organic turn-over ·
Design guided by bio-geo nature ·
Warmth of the Sun ·
Chisel ploughing of compacted soil ·
System self organising ·
System self-governance ·
Fostering emergent properties ·
Increase air flow in compacted soil ·
Water storage and flow ·
Using the free energy functionally ·
Using perturbation ·
Supporting bifurcation ·
Guests and visitors ·
System thriving |
·
Cultural Keyline ·
Neville and Staff ·
Host: Longer term patients ·
Social topography ·
Social topography forms ·
Keypoint themes, mood, values and interaction ·
Key lines of discussion on themes ·
Making functional use of Connexity ·
Transitional organic community ·
Nurturing relational exchange in transitional
community ·
Design guided by bio-psychosocial nature in geo
context ·
Humane caring warmth ·
Cleavering of dysfunctional networks ·
System self organising ·
System self-governance ·
Fostering emergent properties ·
Clearing Air - breathing well together ·
Emotional potential and flow ·
Using the free energy functionally ·
Using perturbation ·
Supporting bifurcation ·
Guests and visitors ·
System thriving |
CULTURAL KEYLINE IN GROUPS
In
socio-morphological terms, a key role of the group facilitator was to
constantly scan for the ‘lay of the land’ in the group. This section extends
the above material on the use of themes as Keylines of discussion in Big Group.
A group of Fraser House patients wrote about how interest in themes was used in
groups – one version of this text included as Appendices 7 and 8 (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 4, p.
17-20). Big Group and Small Group themes
emerged from the unfolding social topography in the group. Themes were not
concocted by group leaders and imposed. Themes are where key issues for all in
the group coalesce. Themes, as social coherence amidst chaos, would arise from
the context and often be self starting, or only needing the slightest nudge to
get underway. Once started on a coherence theme, all participants tended to be
hooked into their links to the theme. Neville would place a metaphorical
dam just below the Keypoint that would hold the energy on the theme, and let
the interaction move, as appropriate to context, along the Keylines of
discussion (metaphorically just downhill of the contour as in Keyline ploughing)
so that it moves with assistance of group momentum (gravity).
Once
a theme was energised in Fraser House groups, and the theme was considered to
be not too superficial or inappropriate, the group may pay some attention to
it, and the suggested or emergent theme may be selected as ‘the Big Group
theme’ for an ensuing period during that hour. This theme would then not be
changed to another without good reason (Appendix 8). Interest in a theme may be
viewed as an attractor that determined the ‘flow’ of attention from ‘all
directions’ near the ‘ridges of high potential energy’ to the ‘Keypoint’.
Within Fraser House Big and Small Groups, both interest and theme were emergent
phenomena. Interest (from the Latin: ‘to enter into the essence or God
energy’) in the theme becomes the Keypoint (literally and sociomorphically)
for a time in the Big Group social topography. The theme becomes the Keyline of
discussion for a time, and thematic psychosocial emotional energy in flow may
be transferred through the Big Group topography via ‘individual channels
parallel to the Keyline’ through the people topography. The word ‘theme’ is
from the Greek ‘thema’ meaning ‘motif; recurrent idea; topic of discussion or
re-presentation’.
The
following notes on interest in the theme is from the Fraser House Staff
Handbook (Appendix 7):
If most of the group is involved
in interaction, it goes without saying that they are also interested. However,
interest can be very high even though there is not much interaction. Look at
their faces, their feet, their hands, their respiration, the way they sit, and
it will be known if they are interested or not (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 4, p.
17-20).
The
Staff Handbook (Appendix 7) also notes the interaction between the
facilitator’s process and the theme, mood, interest, tension and the unfolding
interaction.
Resonance
between all attendees and the theme flowed from the theme having the inherent
property of being conducive to social coherence. To put this into context –
this was with a group of people who were the very mad and the very bad. The
group was filled with polarity – the under active and the over active, the
under controlled and the over controlled, as well as the under anxious and the
over anxious. There were colluding factions and unreachable isolates. In this
dysfunctional tangle there continually emerged themes that held everyone’s
interest – that everyone resonated with – that is, themes ‘conducive to
coherence’. Attendee resonance was supported by the theme-based connexity in
the cultural locality topography.
Group facilitators would
specifically watch for attempts to change the theme. In the patient’s write-up
about the use of interest in themes in Fraser House they wrote that attempts at
changing the theme:
……may
be done deliberately by a patient for a fairly obvious reason (such as a
personality clash with someone involved in the current theme), or a less
obvious reason such as an unconscious identification and a consequent wish to
avoid the theme. It may also be done through plain insensitivity on the part of
the person making the attempt at the change. There are many reasons for these
moves, and it is the therapist’s role to decide on the dynamics of the
situations and then to make use of them by feeding them straight back into the
group at the time, and if necessary, to make an interpretation of the dynamics
operating in the events and occurrences’ (Appendix 7).
As more than one Keyline theme may
be either jostling for attention or potently latent in the ebb and flow of Big
Group energy, Neville’s skill was to identify the most potent one in the
unfolding context – perhaps the one that subsumes a number of the other
presenting Keypoint themes that then may become sub-themes as Keylines of
engagement. Neville passed on this skill to other Big Group facilitators and to
me and others who worked with him in action research.
Recall that there is only one
Keypoint per primary valley. Diagram 2 shows
that Keypoint in different primary valleys are often on different contours with
different potential energies in the respective valley systems. The Keyline only
goes along the contour through the Keypoint till the change of curve (refer diagram 2 in Chapter Five). Isomorphic with
Keyline, the next Cultural Keypoint theme may be at the same, or a higher or
lower contour and associated level of potential energy - so the group
facilitator would note this information in the social milieu in shifting themes
and work with the new energy. There were all manner of competences and nuances
associated with the shift of thematic keypoint in Fraser House groups and how
to work with the change in energy.
Peopling the Topography –
Sensing Cultural Keyline at the Keypoint
In 2006, I spoke with Terry
Widders about visiting Watsons Bay to sense Cultural Keyline at a Keypoint.
Terry spoke of ‘peopling the topography’ and exploring the ‘contours of
peoples’ minds’. Taking up Terry’s suggestion I went to Watson’s Bay (refer
Photo 24) with my son Jamie.
Photo 4 Watson’s Bay Topography - compile made by me from photos taken
by tourist and sent to me October 2005 – used with permission
Recall Neville’s strategic use of
locality mentioned in Chapter Seven. Photo 2 reveals Watsons Bay’s topography.
The Watsons Bay Festival was in the park (The green area in the centre right of
the photo). The park is located in a primary valley below the main ridge and
between two primary ridges. The festival focal point was at a Keypoint in the
primary valley. The festival’s Keypoint theme was ‘celebrating life”. Neville
intentionally placed this celebration of life sixty metres below where
Sydneysiders go to suicide at The Gap. The bus in the photo is parked where the
Fraser House little red bus used to park two years earlier when the Fraser
House patients made crisis calls to stop suiciders.
Jamie and I came to Watsons Bay
Park by ferry and walked up to the Keypoint which is to the right of the path
walking up. Following Terry Widders suggestion, we decided to people the
topography by role-playing potent scenarios from our lives together. We did
this while standing at the Keypoint. In this we were modelling the position
Neville took when he was for instance leading Fraser House Big Group. Jamie and
I separately found where the different players in these re-enactments were
located in the Watsons Bay topography. When we compared where we sensed people
were, we found that we had complete agreement. For both us, our clarity about
people’s placement was inexplicable. Where we sensed them was definitely where
they were; people were definitely not in any other place in the surrounding
topography. Some were in the middle of the bottom of the valley. A few were
above us on the main ridge. Some were on one or other of the primary ridges.
Most were some distance from the Keypoint.
We sensed the themes that were
conducive to coherence in these people. We sensed the located people’s
differing energy, emotion and interest, and how these were linked to the
Keypoint theme in the scenarios. We sensed the nature of the interaction, mood
and value mix that may sustain interest and cohesion.
We also sensed the compaction in
the social topography, and how this compaction was sustaining fixed patterns of
dysfunction. We sensed the possible role-outs from perturbing the compaction,
from chisel ploughing the social terrain. We sensed the effect of this on
‘water’ flow as energy exchange. We sensed how this may flow gently through the
social system without eroding rush from the main ridge, and gently flow out
towards the primary ridges and be received throughout the system. We sensed the
effect of this dynamic on the unfolding of theme-based interaction. We noticed
how some people changed their positions as the scenarios unfolded, and the effects
of this change on the person and his/her interactions with self and others. We
then moved to the high point on the ridge (where photo 24 was taken) to get
another perspective. Neville would also do this to get the big picture. We
returned to the Keypoint and walked and sensed the Keyline. Then we descended
along one of the primary ridges to the bottom of the valley, sensing the
scenarios from the different locations, and as we placed ourselves on others’
places.
I understand the above process has
resonance with Indigenous way. The richness of this embodied sensing of located
interactions only comes from doing it at a Keypoint and in and around the
topography.
SUMMARY
This chapter has explored the many
change processes evolved at Fraser House. Neville’s adapting of Keyline to
Cultural Keyline has been detailed. The next chapter introduces criticisms of
Fraser House and Neville, and includes a response to these. The processes
Neville used to spread Fraser House way into the wider community and to phase out
Fraser House are described. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of
ethical issues in replicating Fraser House.