Similarly, in the case of many human relations training models, the trainer or facilitator is not to disclose much about their personal feelings, thoughts or images (regardless of the source). In Tavistock workshops, the group consultant does share their own images of the group’s unconscious life as it comes to their own awareness, though they would rarely share information regarding their own personal unconscious material as this comes to awareness. In some other human relations training models (especially those encouraging Quad One sharing of intrapsychic material), the group leaders do openly share their own newly emerging Quad Four material. They model Quad One disclosure and through this modeling encourage the Quad One sharing of newly identified (and appreciated) Quad Four material by the workshop participants.
Out in the “real” world, we find the large Quad One/small Quad Four scenario played out—often tragically—in the “spent” artist, who doesn’t have much more to say, write or paint, but keeps replicating the same old themes in her work. The long-standing fear that psychotherapy “robs” an artist of his inspiration and unconscious material may relate to this scenario. We see this scenario also being played out in the “narcissist” who has obsessed about his own psyche so much that he no longer has much new to say about himself to other people. He repeats the same story for the hundredth time about the remarkable insights he gained about himself during a seaside walk in 2006 or the great self-revelation he gained from attending a Harold Pinter play in 2013.
Even more generally—and more importantly—each of us needs to be careful about over-disclosure, even if we are not burned-out artists or boring narcissists. Joe Luft and the original Johari Window have often been misunderstood in this regard. Luft has always advised discretion and thoughtfulness about what we disclose. We must decide what is appropriate to share with other people (particularly about material that has just emerged from Quad Four) and must be sensitive to the feedback other people provide us (directly or indirectly) about their interest in the material that comes into our consciousness from the fourth quadrant. Often times it would be much wiser for us to divert this material from our public quadrant (One) to our hidden quadrant (Three). We lose nothing by being a bit circumspect regarding the new-found insights that come directly from our fourth quadrant.
