Drawing Together

We learn to communicate and cooperate when we accept we can’t do it all on our own. When we share our difficulties and disappointments, celebrate our progress and help one another plan next steps and new ventures, we begin to make a positive difference. It is humbling to recognise that our lives are intertwined; and humility helps us be courageous and inventive enough to pursue our mutual interests. And when things go well, our interactions give stimulation and support in processes—sometimes called proximal processes—that enable us to think and act beyond what we’ve so far been capable of.

An example of this was Donald Winnicott’s developing a practice of literally ‘taking the child’s side’. (See his Playing and Reality, published in 1971 by Tavistock/Routledge). He would leave a piece of paper with a quickly drawn squiggle on it, together with pencils and more sheets of paper, on a low table in his consultation room. As a child came in, she or he had something to pick up and do—continuing the drawing or making her or his own. Winnicott developed diagnostic and therapeutic techniques like this, based on his view that play, discovery and creative communication occur in a shared ‘area of experiencing’—a space between us—where contributions from each of us can be exchanged, overlap and merge.

Winnicott wrote that ‘What happens in the game and in the whole interview depends on the use made of the child’s experience, including the [psychological] material that presents itself… It is almost as if the child, through the drawings, is alongside me, and to some extent taking part in describing the case’. Child and therapist talk to one another about what has happened, what is happening and what might happen. Their joint experience helps them share and develop understandings which ring true or look useful.

As a teacher, I came to feel that things went well when it seemed that my students were one point of a triangle and I was another, the third point being what we shared an interest in and focused on. This is a different dynamic from one which would have me possessing knowledge or skill to hand over or impose.

We are helped to grow—physically, emotionally and intellectually—when we’re guided and supported by those who want us to thrive: we grow with the help of someone by our side. Whatever our backgrounds and circumstances, we are shown how to grow by people and experiences that nurture our confidence, resilience and perseverance. Neither money nor social status guarantees these advantages. (See, for example, the professor of child development and education Iram Siraj’s and professor of education Aziza Mayo’s (2014) Social Class and Educational Inequality: The impact of parents and schools, published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press).

Regardless of whether we come from a family in a high or low socio-economic group, those of us who have little protection against the risks we face tend to be relatively unsuccessful at school and vulnerable at home and in the community. Neither money nor social status guarantees well-being or satisfying progress. Those of us who have socio-economic advantages can be as neglected or harmed as any who are materially less well-off. And those of us, whom socio-economic measures might classify as disadvantaged, can be as valued and supported as any who have material advantages.

Depending in part on how well our long-term memory works, it seems we can keep up stable relationships with no more than between 100 and 250 people. The number includes past school and neighbourhood friends, ex-colleagues and so on, with whom we would want to connect again. Lapsed and stop-start relationships are not counted. Introverts might have 100 and extroverts 250 people in their largest circle. Our brain’s neocortex can’t be relied on to deal with more than those numbers if we are to keep up meaningful relationships. These are the anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist ‘Dunbar’s numbers’. (See his Human Evolution: Our Brains and Behaviour, published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.)

Human groups larger than between 100 and 250 depend on transparent protocols and explicit standards if they’re to have rational integrity and be at all coherent. Above 250, we move beyond the interpersonal into public and/or virtual realms. And, in our industrialised, urban, suburban, global lives, many of us have an ever-expanding range of technologically assisted contacts with exponentially many more people than those we feel we know.

Mutual understanding and cooperation grow out of our seeing ourselves and others as belonging to a circle that is wider than the few people we are closest to. We help ourselves by recognising the signals and triggers of anxiety and antagonism, by developing strategies to calm ourselves and by considering facts relating to our essential and shared interests. Counteracting instincts and cultural traits is a serious challenge. Rushing to judgement and following the tide of prejudiced opinion stop us checking evidence.

Seeing differences between us and others is no reason to deprive anyone of a welcome, rights or privileges. We can choose to see that our humanity transcends our individual and group differences. The challenge is for as many of us as possible to find, express and fulfil our true and better selves by pursuing what is good for us all.

 

 

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