How do we live well with others?

15th June 2023

By Lyn French

How do we live well with others? is one of the unspoken questions that has inspired great thinkers through the ages. The cultural theorist Stuart Hall examined this subject through a politically informed psycho-social lens, considering themes such as the roles we adopt or resist, the ways in which we interact with each other in our personal, social, and professional lives and the parts played by historical or contextual influences. Hall was influential in early campaigns for social and racial justice and a central figure in the founding of the Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva).

These preoccupations also contributed to the work of Wilfred Bion who developed group analysis in the UK based on his work with WW2 veterans suffering from what came to be known as post-traumatic stress disorder. Bion recognised the ways in which unconscious dynamics mould relationships in – and between – groups. As psychodynamic theory illustrates and our own experience confirms, we all have a fundamental need to belong. This deeply felt wish to be ‘a part of’ can foster the formation of ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, a process which involves splitting- off unwanted parts of the self and projecting them into others. Such unconscious dynamics, often going undetected, frequently underpin the tensions and frictions that surface in everyday group life.

Our internal life is multi-layered shaped by how we define ourselves, the interpretations we give to our experiences and the personal narratives we construct about our past and present. Questions we may find asking ourselves could include ones such as, ‘What is our emotional legacy – are we carrying inter‑generational wounds or identity shame? Does this inheritance pull us toward certain roles in our relationships or in the social groups we belong to? In what ways do our family’s relationship patterns and/or their perception of us impact? In what circumstances might we identify as the outsider or the victim and what is the unconscious context for this? When do we find ourselves taking up a helper or rescuer’s role – are we drawn by the sense of power this might give us?’

Bion and Hall remain seminal figures whose ideas continue to inform our understanding of how we make sense of our worlds both within and without. Each was interested not just in how we engage in social groups and the roles we adopt but, importantly, how we describe our current
and historical experiences to ourselves and to each other and the impact of this on our relationships. We know that memories are narratives that can change and shift, forged out the residue of emotionally potent experiences, some too disturbing or painful to hold in mind,
others edited to align with our preferred take on the past.

Margareta Kern’s beautifully decorated ‘cake’, entitled Kolačnikov, evokes the atmosphere of family celebration, yet its machine‑gun outline points to darker, more unsettling undercurrents. Alluding to the ways in which violence and political histories seep into everyday life, the work might make us think about the impact of war, migration and displacement on ordinary people.

Alluding to the ways in which violence and political histories seep into everyday life, the work might make us think about the impact of war, migration and displacement on ordinary people.

Born in 1974 in Banja Luka, which at the time was part of socialist Yugoslavia and is now located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Margareta Kern later migrated to the UK during the period of conflict in the Balkans. Knowing that she was shaped by the multi‑ethnic, politically complex context of the former Yugoslavia gives us a very particular lens through which to see Kolačnikov.

Taking up a more psychoanalytically informed perspective, it has long been noted that relationships carry an inherent mix of tenderness and aggression, love and hate, inevitably resulting in times when we are hurt or hurt others sometimes intentionally, other times unavoidably or even unwittingly. Seen in this light, the artwork becomes a reminder of the breadth of human emotion, hinting at the complex, lifelong task we all face of negotiating intimacy, dependency and aggression.

Reading this image within a relational context, we might see it as a reminder of the uncomfortable reality that the more primal our emotional bonds, the deeper the hurts both inflicted and felt. We’re all familiar with the barbed compliment which carries a deeper, unconscious message, even, at times, a lethal one designed to ‘shoot down’ the one we are envious of or have hateful or conflicted feelings towards.

Such emotions are felt very strongly in our early years before we’ve developed the capacity to understand or manage these feelings. No child escapes the pain of loneliness, exclusion, rejection and intense jealousies. Residual hurts reside in us all which can influence subsequent choices or aspirations as well as the meanings we give to experiences. For instance, some of us only became conscious of being seen as ‘different’ by others when we were teased in the playground because of our skin colour or our accent or even the colour of our hair. Or perhaps we’ve internalised the felt experience of being perceived as ‘not the same as’ in our own family, just as Stuart Hall, a slightly darker skinned child than his sibling, so poignantly described in the film The Stuart Hall Project (2013). Hall was motivated and inspired by his difference, determined to use his personal history as a platform from which to spark debate about, and campaign for, social and political change.

In contrast to using individual experience as a prompt for deeper reflection, we can just as easily mobilise our internal self‑representations in more self‑centred ways. For instance, we may persuade ourselves that something about us — our politics, our creativity, or our
intellectual abilities — sets us apart as ‘better than’. We can easily elevate ourselves in our own minds by projecting the notion that we are in some way ‘superior’, laying down social markers which are immediately recognisable to others in aid of this. By stage-managing our image, we present a self-authored and carefully edited version of who we are.

The men placed on plinths facing a dilapidated industrial building can be read as figures trapped between old and new value systems. The title I want to be a gentleman – hints at shifting social expectations such as the pressure to embody new forms of ‘acceptable behaviour’ and ways of signalling ‘success’ in a society undergoing rapid change.

Lu Chunsheng’s photograph, also featured in How do we live well with others, captures something of this. His depiction of individuals perched precariously atop of very high pedestals set against a dark and foreboding sky reminds us of the isolation we can suffer if we place
ourselves ‘above’ others. Creating hierarchies of individual value and ranking them is commonplace; living well with others requires a letting go of this kind of competitiveness and co-comparison.

Born in 1968 in China, Lu Chunsheng now lives and works in Shanghai. We can see how his background may have shaped the themes he chooses to feature including the disorientation and role‑confusion that accompanied China’s transition from collectivist ideology to rapid industrialisation and global capitalism. The men placed on plinths facing a dilapidated industrial building can be read as figures trapped between old and new value systems. The title I want to be a gentleman – hints at shifting social expectations such as the pressure to embody new forms of ‘acceptable behaviour’ and ways of signalling ‘success’ in a society undergoing rapid change. The performative nature of identity, especially masculine identity, is alluded to in a context where traditional roles are destabilised.

As nations, social groups, families and individuals, being ‘one amongst many’, ‘alongside’ rather than ‘above’ or ‘below’, is the ultimate challenge. To achieve this requires paying sustained attention to our self-and-other perceptions and projections. The ongoing work of re-calibrating how we see ourselves, the image we project, and how we perceive others, is central if we are to better understand our similarities and differences. Reconsidering collective and individual identities from more emotionally attuned, psycho-social perspectives, is a ‘live’ project to which we can all meaningfully contribute.

Author

Lyn French, Director of A Space

Lyn French is the Director of A Space. She first trained in art (MA Goldsmiths) with a focus on conceptual art practice before completing an art therapy training and a psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. She was a staff member on the Birkbeck MSc in Counselling & Psychotherapy with Children + Adolescents for over 10 years and has co-edited two books in the field as well as contributing to the production of iniva’s emotional learning cards. 

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