Playing with Individualism in a Social Therapy Group It was an Olympic year and Joe was excited to have made the US badminton team. But, after returning from the disappointing World Championships in Taipei and a week-long training camp in Indonesia, he was despondent. He said to his therapy group that the trip was a disaster. “The whole team played poorly, including me. We were beaten by teams we should have beaten. The coach was not nice about it. He told us he was ashamed and embarrassed to take us to the Olympics. He threatened us: If we played that poorly at the Olympics in the preliminary rounds, he would ‘pull us.’ That means we go home on the next plane. This is a real punishment and humiliation as everyone knows about it, and you don’t get to stay to enjoy the whole Olympic experience.” Joe was speaking to his therapy group, but almost a year earlier, he had begun individual therapy with me to improve his mental skills. Joe had read that there were three areas he could work on: confidence, concentration, and relaxation. They were interdependent, but Joe thought he needed the most help with concentration especially at match point when a “weird” feeling came over him and he “gave up.” He had practiced deep breathing, positive self-talk, and positive imagery, but he felt he was still not in control of his thoughts and emotions. He thought this control was necessary in order to have the confidence that he wouldn’t lose his concentration on “game” day.After several months in individual therapy, it became clear that Joe’s mental skills were connected to his emotional relationship to who he was as an athlete and what he was doing emotionally when he competed. He wasn’t having tantrums on the court like so many athletes who tossed their rackets or broke their clubs; he was having a weird feeling come over him and giving up. Although the experts often prescribe “anger management” for those with tantrums, the rest of us say that they need to grow up. Was Joe, like so many athletes, often bringing the emotionality of his two-year-old self to a match?Could the group help Joe “grow up” - bring a more emotionally developed self to the match? The answer is, “I don’t know.”Recently, someone sent me an article in the New York Times, "Does Therapy Really Work," (May 16, 2023) in which the author, Susan Dominus, interviews people who have researched the question. One respondent said, "I don't know which treatment will work... and that is something that I find, as a clinician, very unsatisfying." After extensive discussions with researchers, and coming up with no clear answer, Susan, herself, admitted to the frustration of her task. Indeed, we want answers; we want to know; we are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. At the end of the article, she interviews a therapist, Jonathan Shedler, who helps. He says that the research is too narrowly focused on symptom reduction and measuring results the day therapy ends. The researchers aren't measuring other benefits; patients learn to build with the challenges they face. Could we say that Jonathan is alluding to the fact that patient grow emotionally? And could we say that Susan's concept of therapy was more than symptom relief? She spoke of her own therapy as bringing insight, fresh perspectives, enhanced life adjustment to transitions, self-care, and self-awareness. That sounds more like growth than symptom relief. But can growth be measured? Why would you want to measure it? My favorite line in the article is, from Andrew Gerber whose training analyst told him at the end of his training, "Your analysis will cure you of the need to do research."This could have many interpretations. Two possibilities: either that analysis is so messy, so complex that you soon realize that it can’t be researched or that you will come to understand that needing to know whether it works is one of your pathologies. I prefer the latter. I wouldn’t, however, call it a pathology. I would call it emotional underdevelopment. Growth requires us to continue to create our lives in the face of uncertainty.The inability to face uncertainty is part of our underdevelopment. Joe and the group and I will work despite not knowing whether it “works.” The uncertainty of not knowing is part of the “group culture.” We are in the uncertainty together. Sharing it makes it easier to go on together.