It is just after midnight and I'm back at my friends house after a long day and night at the American Group Psychotherapy Association annual meeting. There was a lot of great stuff today. The president's speech was very powerful and deserves a blog post of its own. I went to a dance therapy session that was marvelous, which also deserves a post of its own. Even the dance in the evening deserves a post of its own. Then, there is the summary where I try to tie it all together. That is taking shape in my mind, but will have to wait. Before I do any of that, I feel that I need to process some of how I am being treated here.

I am wearing a press badge. I'm getting the sense that this is something new and there is probably some good discussions about how AGPA can better deal with the press going forward. Yet it is Friday night and I'm not ready for that either. Instead I want to talk about my own experiences as 'the press' for a moment. You see, for very few people I am 'Aldon'. For some, I'm 'Aldon from the mailing list'. That's pretty good, it still touches on my humanity. Yet for many, I am 'the press'. The press, an object that invokes fear in some. What will I write about? Will I respect confidentiality? Will I see and reveal something that people don't want revealed? Yalom talks about how one of the key feelings that groups help recognize the universality of is feelings of incompetence. Will I observe and reveal the incompetence of some group psychotherapist? Even worse, will I get the story wrong, and report some falsehood as if it were truth?

Others see the press as something beneficial. There is much that group psychotherapy can offer our country and our world. Unfortunately too many people have little or no idea about group psychotherapy. I do hope to go into this, especially as I write up my thoughts about the President's keynote, as well as about an open session I went to on Thursday.

Yet with that, just about everyone is approaching me in terms of my role, and the task of writing that goes along with it. This evening I went to the dance. Everyone asked why I wasn't writing, why I wasn't taking notes, was I going to write about the dance, what was I going to say. You will have to wait for that. I do hope I can take my experiences from the evening and write a good entry about it.

This is where the thought really came home. I am an object. I am a role. The Press. I seem to have lost my humanity. In the large group there was a recognition that in that role, I am a container for anxieties about boundaries and confidentiality. It was noted that anyone can break a boundary. Anyone can write a blog post, some people might even be able to write scholarly articles for peer reviewed journals. Yet I am the one that is expected to write about it. I am the container to hold those anxieties. I was glad that this was recognized.

Some people have fantasies. Will this experience awaken some deep longing or need that I might have to become a therapist? Whose fantasy is that? Is it mine? Is it people from various groups I've been part of? Is it a fantasy that should be acted upon? Another topic for exploration.

Back at the large group, I am not the only one who has been stripped of my humanity. Others have lost their humanity to the large group as well. The leader? The ex-leaders? Large groups are great at killing off their leaders, but these leaders, like the press aren't humans. They are objects, roles, containers for all kinds of complicated feelings. Perhaps this ties back to the great session on how we deal with political persecution that I still need to write my blog post about. And with that, what are our fantasies about our leaders? The leaders, past, present and future of the large group at the AGPA conference? The leaders, past, present and future of the United States, and other leaders we run into in our daily lives.

Saturday will end with a three hour large group. It will be interesting to see what unfolds.