Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable. ~David W. Augsburger
“And you, and you
You're gonna love me” ~ Jennifer Holliday, Dream Girls.
The recent riots in the UK, triggered by the knife attack and murder of a group of children in the coastal town of Southport, is adding to the evidence that there is something that feels very powerful and dangerous bubbling just below the surface of English society. Parts of our society are desperate to be heard and maybe also feel cared for. But are communicating in ways that are so disturbing it can feel impossible for others to bear listening to them and so the resulting determination to silence becomes almost inevitable. But whether we like it or not - silencing does not actually shut down the need to be heard. No matter what determined leaders might insist on.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
— Aldous Huxley
When thinking about cultural pressure and the silencing that can be insidious in close community relationships I can’t help but think of my favourite book, Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”.
In this story Austen tells the tale of a second chance at love between the characters Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth. The plot of the novel pivots around an event that happened seven years before the story takes place, where Anne and Captain Wentworth fell deeply in love, but Anne was persuaded out of marrying him. I know it is a gentle romance novel, rather than a violent, political narrative, but for me it brilliantly shows how the personal, political and the social intertwine: How we can all be persuaded in and out of actions and beliefs even despite our own experience telling us otherwise. So much so that discerning what is true becomes a painful discovery of betrayal of the group, by the group, for the group, including yourself.
A reader of the book must work out for themselves how Anne was able to be persuaded out of marriage, as it is rarely openly talked about in the novel. At the surface level it would appear that Anne, a firm member of the middle class, was persuaded by her father and god mother for practical reasons: Wentworth was poor and from a lower social position and she knew they thought Wentworth was unsuitable, but this fear of poverty and change in social position in fact did not persuade her to reject him. Wentworth was about to go to war at Sea and she became convinced the timing wasn’t right for the couple and she would serve him better to wait. Wentworth, not able to tolerate her timidity and inconstancy, broke with her and communication between them ceased. However, this still was not the full picture. As the novel progresses Austen selects narratives that expose how many more influencing factors were present, not least both family and societal pressures and the imposing rhetoric of the day.
In terms of family pressures - we discover Anne lost her mother at the age of 14 and met Wentworth a few years after this. We also know Anne was primarily responsible for the running of the house and the emotional care of her sisters - both of whom seem to be locked in trauma responses, each with their own associated arrested development. Her family were living beyond their means and the inheritance laws of the day meant there was huge financial instability looming over them. At the very least the family certainly would be left open to gossip.
Whilst gossip and reputational damage sound like minor social problems, how we story things up and get storied up matters. Gossip has a very dark shadow (Cruz et al 2019). Just as sport is the playful side of physical aggression. The light side of gossip can give social entertainment, group bonding and maybe even be the path to its subjects receiving support and care. However, just like physical aggression can aggregate to mob violence and war. Gossip likewise can be taken up and unionised. Gossip in this form is a ferocious type of sibling policing in groups. Being storied up as bad or toxic leads to relational exclusion, socially sanctioned non-cooperation when trying to access support and ultimately exile. In stories, as in real life, exile is a punishment worse than death. Exile is a form of dis-membership from the body of the group and ultimately facilitates a process of erasure (out of sight, our of mind) - which impacts not only the present, but also how history is interpreted.
In the book Persuasion we start to see that for Anne to leave home would mean to abandon her family which would be both a personal taboo but also a social one. In an ideal world, she would have been able to talk these problems through, but her experiences could not be spoken about. Thus leaving Anne to her own conclusions: that it would be too terrible for everyone were she to declare her desire to leave. As such one way of understanding Anne’s experience is that she was living an untellable story.
When thinking about untellable stories and their dangers of leading us into self-defeating action, I often turn to thinking about communication in groups and the LUUUTT model - Pearce & Pearce 1998. LUUUTT is an acronym for the stories lived, the stories untold, stories unheard, stories unknown that, once explored, expand the collective sense making, the storytelling process, and the stories told.
Lived Stories: These are the experiences we've lived through—our personal histories, memories, and events that shape our lives.
Unknown Stories: These are the hidden or unexplored aspects of our lives—things we haven't yet acknowledged as important.
Untold Stories: These are the narratives we keep to ourselves, perhaps due to fear, shame, or vulnerability.
Unheard Stories: These are the stories we share but have not been heard or have been misunderstood.
Untellable Stories: These are the narratives we can't express fully due to cultural norms, taboos, or limitations.
Storytelling: The act of sharing our experiences with others.
Stories Told: The narratives we've communicated to the world
Johnson and Robinson have also added Undigested stories to the LUUUTT model. This model creates an invitation to explore discrepancies in how we tell the stories we live, to create meaning.
The idea suggested in this model of psychological understanding is that we live certain experiences, which we then communicate to others. As others hear our stories, these people act as mirrors and so as experiences become known to others, they also become more fully known to ourselves.
However, if a story being lived is repeatedly told but not heard, then something tricky starts to happen to the teller. Initially they can feel unheard and uncertain even of what has happened in their life. If the experience of not being heard continues to be repeated, eventually we do not even know what story we are telling. We know we are in distress, we know we need to communicate. But what words to use, what actions to display? Given the ones before did not seem to be right. We become uncertain how loudly or quietly we need to be, to be attended to. Or if the story always needs to come with a particular difference or twist.
For example the society in Anne’s world would insist on certain feelings and behaviour as being acceptable only in certain groups. Women were so posed to be sensitive but regulated at all times. They were given laudanum (opium) to calm their nerves and they were intentionally kept out of ‘difficult’ conversations.
"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives." ― Jane Austen, Persuasion
When a story becomes unknown to the teller, people become open to persuasion about their reality and will begin to try and to be the alternate story that is being given to them. Eg A child who is encouraged to never look back in anger and always find the good in others, even when wounded by them - will begin to believe they have no right to anger or grief, and feeling it is evidence that they are a bad person who may even hurt others merely by feeling pain. They may even believe there is no difference in how they show pain to others people - with their tears or with their physical aggression.
British literary scholar Gillian Beer established that Austen had profound concerns about the levels and applications of "persuasion" employed in society, especially as it related to the pressures and choices facing the young women of her day. Beer said: Austen was keenly aware that the human quality of persuasion—to persuade or to be persuaded, rightly or wrongly—is fundamental to the process of human communication, and that, in her novel "Jane Austen gradually draws out the implications of discriminating 'just' and 'unjust' persuasion."
My former analyst Claire Bacha spoke profoundly on the necessity of courage to stay in the moment in groups and to try and put into words our experiences. She describes in her 2001 paper how it is these acts of courage that facilitate mutatality in meaning making that is then the mechanism for healing and change.
It takes bravery to continue to insist on being heard when social pressure demands silence. But how do we find words that can be heard and people who will listen and help make meaning? Indeed in the story of Persuasion it is only when Anne learns how to be brave and give voice to her socially controversial views on a woman’s capacity for love, that transformation of the stuckness in her life could occur. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone she had to learn to take responsibility for her own contentment in life and seeing this as having value beyond who she can agree with, rescue or serve. She must bear being experienced as a disappointment by the group for not offering agreeability both for her views and her choice in partner.
So how does this fit with the rioting, violence, racism and grief we are seeing expressed in the streets of England? For me questions raised become what is trying to be expressed? And why is it so difficult to listen? Why are the powerful so keen to nip these communications in the bud without attempts to make meaning of them? To play one group off against another? Can we bear our differences? Do our leaders know how to have courage and stay with the necessary uncertainty of the moment - or can they just not bear being disappointing and so insist on having answers? Must we continue down this dangerous path of persuasion?
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