Timespirits

The term timespirit, coined by Dr. Arnold Mindell, suggests a concept which can help lift the stigma attached to the roles people play in groups. The term timespirit¹ implies that: polarizations are not entirely a product of given individuals and groups and that roles are not static but rather change, escalate, diminish, and even disappear with time. (Mindell 1992: 23)

When a person presents a problem which may appear personal but which also concerns her role in a group or society, working with the person is like working with the spirit of the time. In a way, people are transitory vehicles for problems. Simply assigning a role label to the individual may suppress other potentially useful parts already present in the person. This article is aimed at investigating the revolutionary concept of time-spirit, which adds to the concept of roles in groups.²

Role theory

The term role refers to the different parts that individuals may play in a group or social field. The field includes everyone, is omnipresent, and exerts forces upon things in its midst. In sociological theory role occupation is called person selection. This view holds that if no one is there to fill a particular role, society will "create" such a person. Roles usually have longer lives than people. We cannot get rid of the roles or parts of a group because groups are in some ways similar to human beings, in that they have the ability to perceive, have minds and personalities of their own, and are connected to other humans and groups.

Mindell has discovered that in any group, roles tend to distribute themselves among the available people. If one person changes roles, it will make it harder for the others to remain in the roles they occupy at the moment. The time-spirit theory extends and completes the theory of roles by describing their temporal and transitory nature. By emphasizing their dynamic character, it allows us to see how roles alter their basic characteristics through a process of evolution.

Working with timespirits

In group work, it is helpful to first identify the various roles, or timespirits, present in a system, and then allow them to speak. Each group has timespirits which are difficult for it to express. In an industrious business group, taking time off or not been interested in working is a difficult role. In a personal-growth group, attending to business will probably be a difficult role to represent. These implicit feelings hover in the background; Mindell calls such timespirits "ghosts" (1992). A system that gives no time or space to its ghosts will eventually be disturbed or destroyed by them. Therefore, all the parts in a field, even those we do not like or believe to be useless, and those which are originally hidden, must be supported.

Throughout history, many systems have flipped rapidly, replacing one timespirit with its opposite, which often happens as the political pendulum swings from right to left and back again. Wars, violence and repression are all marked by this shift. Power becomes unconscious in one part of a system and turns up in hurtful ways in another. The theory of timespir-its offers the possibility of a new history, a new world in which systems do not flip but are consciously facilitated so that all parts are recognized. This awareness enables opposing forces to relate instead of repressing one another. If we don't use awareness to mediate relationship between timespirits such as love and hatred, or poverty and prosperity, we may simply cycle by unconsciously switching from one side to the other.

Emerging timespirits in groups

Educational, business and political groups are often polarized into conflicts between competing roles, such as leaders and followers, insiders and outsiders, and women and men. Such factions, or roles, call on people to fill them. If a certain role is not sufficiently filled in a group, those members who best match its characteristics will be drawn to fill it (Mindell, 1989). If we think of roles also as timespirits, this dynamic in a group is not static, but can change. Roles are not limited to the people who appear to fit them. We all carry apparently conflicting roles within us. Cultural and biological processes tend to create roles, but individual freedom enables us to fill any role we are called to.

If no one identifies with a given role, the time-spirit hovers in the field in the form of the dreams and unconscious behavior of individuals in the group. In other words, it becomes a ghost role. Goodbread says that". .. the group has an edge to consciously occupying dream figures which carry secondary process information. In the case of groups, this edge manifests itself throughindividuals" (1995: 17). If one person can bring a particular timespirit into a group process, it then becomes easier for others to step into that role or timespirit. The roles with which we are so identified are actually far less personal

then we usually realize. Roles can be seen as patterns which are trying to express themselves through individuals. When an individual gets stuck in one role, it may become very difficult for others to get out of their roles (Goodbread, 1990). This situation creates tension in the field.

Transforming timespirits in community

Group members unconsciously stigmatize roles. Certain roles are seen as unacceptable. Transformation, however, is possible. If time-spirits are consciously identified, played out, or even temporarily taken on by a person, they have a chance to interact with other roles and may thus change. An apparently flexible person could transform rapidly into tyrannical figure, or an apparent tyrant could become compassionate. A contemporary case example from India elucidates this point.

The parents of Phoolan Devi, who was the subject of a recent film, The Bandit Queen, were killed and her was house set ablaze by a group of people from a higher caste. Phoolan, a teenager from a lower caste, was then gang-raped by the group. This event sowed a seed of revenge in Phoolan. As time passed, she trained herself to become rough and tough and eventually became a dacoit.³ She organized a gang and started killing the members of the group that had killed her parents and victimized her. Phoolan's vengeance then spread to the whole community. People began to murder and burn the houses of members of the caste that had initially violated Phoolan and her family. Phoolan successfully eluded all the authorities, including the government police, and led a reign of terror in the whole area. Finally, a government authority, acting as facilitator, offered her a mild punishment and a fair deal with dignity (destigmatization), provided she surrender. Phoolan Devi, along with her gang members, surrendered to the government police force. After few years she was released from prison, as was promised by the government. She married and is now a social worker.

The above case shows that Phoolan was more than just her role as a tough bandit. Many time-spirits were present in her. The growth of those parts depended on how she was treated by the field. The government authorities who offered a mild punishment might have acted on the awareness that Phoolan's violence was also a role which captured the discontent of an entire repressed segment of the populace. The transformation of apparently negative parts is possible, provided they are respectfully addressed in a trusting environment. Even a killer timespirit, as above, is able to evolve into a healer.

Although we may think of roles as static, immutable constants, they surprise us with their capacity to yield, develop, and evolve. This is truly the timespirit element of roles. Groups and individuals have the capacity to become conscious of the many feelings and timespirits within them and to use them profitably. But if we lose awareness of this, we divide ourselves by identifying with our color, country, caste, creed and class.

The message of timespirits

Timespirits remind us of the power of our world to transform itself. The polarities which trouble fields seem static and hopeless until we see them as tension between timespirits. Even well-known concepts such as childhood, mother, and father can be viewed as timespirits, since their details are specific to time and place, and since they change with time (Mindell and Mindell, 1992). Timespirits are often experienced as mythical beings which express fundamental human polarities. Heroes are timespirits with superhuman attributes, while villains are portrayed as evil monsters. Every field has a villain and a hero. Both are potentially meaningful, but until they are unfolded, they merely fight for liberation through the individuals who occupy them. What you feel at a given moment may be a part of our whole world, a timespirit in a field that is trying to express its message for everyone's benefit.

Minorities and conflicts as timespirits

At the center of social life around the world lie a multitude of turbulent, conflicting fields that are structured by tensions between minority and majority groups. The "minority" is a timespirit experienced by untouchables in India, and by blacks and Jews in many places at many times, to name but a few examples. According to Mindell: All over the world, any majority group will say the same things about the minority groups. Typically, majority groups or those in power believe that the minorities or those without power are: different, strange, and dangerous; stigmatized, morally inferior, or alien; not deserving of social rights; incapable and worthy of only the lowest social jobs; unclean, evil, corrupting, or destructive to the world; unconscious and dumb; paranoid and belligerent; intellectually inferior. (1992: 23-24)

These beliefs are actually projections of aspects of all of us. The majority projects those qualities which it does not accept onto minority groups. Such views are repressive. However, it is impossible to fully repress a minority position, since it is a timespirit which inhabits all of us. The following situation happened recently in India. It shows how timespirits' unprocessed energies collide and create problems.

A man named Mr. Lai, who came from a higher caste Hindu majority, also belonged to a minority group by virtue of his physical disability. Although he had a doctoral degree, he had to struggle to retain a job at various institutions. His employers did not appreciate him and ignored his potential. Mr. Lai finally compromised by settling on a secure job with which he was dissatisfied. His relationships with his colleagues remained strained. After some years he used his influence to get promoted to the therapeutic post of Assistant Professor, for which he was not professionally qualified.

Some months later, one of his qualified but underprivileged colleagues, a member of the lower caste Hindu minority, fearfully disclosed Mr. Lai's illicit occupation of the therapeutic post. This colleague did so out of a sense of injustice. Although the colleague qualified for Mr. Lai's job, he had been denied it because of caste discrimination. As the matter was made public, the authorities found themselves under pressure, and eventually forced Mr. Lai to abandon his post for his earlier, less satisfying job.

But the lower caste person who had initiated the proceeding against Mr. Lai still did not obtain the therapeutic post of Assistant Professor.

In this case, members of two different minorities collided. Neither of them was used to their full potential by the majority which discriminated against them. Both were suffering and were less than optimally useful in their society. The authorities were not able to work with the situation between the two men, and also among the group as a whole, which had various time-spirits of privilege and lack of privilege. In addition to inviting embarrassment and economic loss for themselves, the majority unknowingly instigated relationship conflict between minorities. When such issues are not processed, lack of awareness prevails and potential human growth is arrested.

This case reveals how unprocessed timespirits' energies continue to create psychosocial problems and pollute our field. A minority may appear to comply, but the group spirit and atmosphere of even a large organization will eventually be ruined by the mood of resentment, mistrust, and hatred. When we are inside these polarizations, we feel that these are human problems, created by people. But the conflict between the minority and the majority is a conflict organized by a field; it is a timespirit dividing people from one another! Thus, we must unfold field tensions as if the field itself were trying to express itself, and simultaneously withdraw negative projections onto certain groups or positions. Thus can conflict in a group be seen as attempt by the timespirits to confront, conflict with, and know one another.

Notes

1. For a detailed discussion of timespirits, see Mindell's The Leader as Martial Artist, Chapter 3.

2.1 wholeheartedly appreciate and salute the editorial board of the Journal, and also Ingrid Schuitevoerder and Rhea, who guided me in the revision of this article.

3. A member of any of the robber bands of ancient and modern India and Burma. The bands formerly lived in the hills and attacked on horseback.

References

Goodbread, Joseph. Radical Intercourse: The Inevitable Communion Created by Dreaming. Portland, OR: Lao Tse Press, Forthcoming, January 1997.

Goodbread, Joseph. The Act of Therapy: Art and Science in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. Unpublished Manuscript, 1990.

Mindell, Amy and Arnold. Riding the Horse Backwards: Process Work in Theory and Practice. London and New York: Penguin-Arkana, 1992.

Kapur, Shekhar. The Bandit Queen. India: Kaleidoscope Productions, 1994.

Mindell, Arnold. The Year I: Global Process Work. London and New York: Penguin-Arkana, 1989.

Mindell, Arnold. The Leader as Martial Artist. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992.

J. M. Revar has an M. Phil in Medical and Social Psychology. He works with Psychodiagnostics and Psychotherapy at the Government Medical College, in Surat, India. He applies process work philosophy at work and at home, and occasionally becomes a timespirit.