Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

THE SENATE INITIATIVE 153

of me. I was an unprincipled liar; or a shallow, pretentious poseur; a hollow, insincere tub-thumper; an impossibly vain, egotistic trumpet; a twister. And much else.

“What about yourself?” I generally answered. Adept at the art of stringing words together I did not ask myself what I really thought. I merely replied out of the anger and resentment aroused in me by the “truth-speaking.” Many of the

things said to me were true, and I knew they were true. But the spirit in which they were said was rarely truthful. Frequently those group meetings ended in electric storms. After they closed, we all made our way to a cafe, generally Lyon’s Corner House, because it was open all night, for a meal, and the atmosphere cooled down. We were good friends once more.®

Another participant recalled going home at night “after very soul-searing sessions, very difficult ones—a lot of us were strained to the point where we wondered whether we could go on with it. All of us must have gone back feeling that. I remember I would go back and I would have to work out for myself what it was all in aid of.”

The worst fate that could befall a group member was when they were made the target of a bout of ‘truth-speaking’ from Mitrinovic himself. According to Davies

He had a way of penetrating one’s last defences, of peeling off, not only one’s clothes, but one’s skin, and flaying one alive.

Just as his masterly flattery made for ecstasy, so his equally masterly criticism made for torment . . . The victim was helpless. He was battered (physically) into stupidity. But—amazing man!—he had a marvellous way of dissipating the hatred. At the end of the session (four, five, six hours), he would whisk me off in a taxi to a restaurant, and then explain that he was subjecting me to all this process, because I was important, because I was strong. He left the weaklings alone, he said; but I was destined to play a great part, therefore I must be disciplined, purified, hardened. Whom the Master loveth ‘He also chasteneth.’ He rubbed salve into my wounds and soothed my vanity.?

One of the ways in which members coped with the physical and psychic strain of earning a living during the day, then spending the evening until the early hours in some group activity or other—maybe being ‘grouped’ in the process—was to go on an ‘outing’ as it was called. Watson Thomson regularly ‘ran away,’ taking himself off into the country to escape the tensions and occasional torments of the intense interpersonal life. Invariably while he was away he suffered heavy guilt feelings about deserting his ‘family,’ who always welcomed him back with open arms.