I’ve come to the conclusion, for me, that the foundations of my personality were in a sick social/family system and that psychotherapy has been inadequate to help me overcome that.

Overcoming that would mean – what? To find or develop other foundations for my personality?

I’m not a happy solitary plankton, able to drift and make my own food from sunlight. So, uprooting myself and yet -- putting down new roots – where? And how? Without a healthy personality to begin with – how to recognize a place where I might re-root myself, and how to get along with folks until the roots are established? It’s a conundrum, for sure.

More “healthy” people, with more complete adult personalities, may be able to do that, but I have not been able to. I don’t qualify as disabled exactly, but my participation in and ability to contribute society has been very limited despite my best efforts.

I definitely support the communal idea. As a whole, I am an adult, with economic resources and emotional defenses that allow me to function somewhat as an adult, but “parts” of me are, or have been, still a baby or stuck adolescent and need to grow in a “healthy” environment, if people (and I'm willing to try to contribute to that) can figure out what that might mean. But what I think is needed is more than what the support groups I’ve been to currently offer, although one free-form group I lucked into recently has helped a lot.

When this idea has come up before, some have said that they definitely do not want to be “forced” into a group situation and that individual therapy works well for them. That’s awesome – for those for whom the current system ain’t broke, don’t mess with that. But for me, it definitely hasn’t worked. With consequences both for me and for the society, I think, to which I cannot contribute well, despite my best efforts.