From toxic bonds to healing relationships. A journey through group analytic theory and practice

Abstract

The essentials of therapeutic practice in group analysis are summarised through three basic principles. The conductor is responsible for fostering a climate that allows each of a group’s members to find their own voice; bear witness to the voices of others; and come out of the shadows together through the group’s discourse. These principles are built on the author’s earlier writing about the speech, silence, and the language of the group which can make a home amongst strangers. They are framed in the ordinary language of daily experience and the parallel idiom of musicology to address the most primary of musical instruments—the voice. They incorporate of a range of other terms and concepts that bring our attention to core complexities at the heart of many peoples’ deepest sources of disquiet arising out of unresolved intergenerational trauma. The group’s work is akin to a mourning process set in motion for hitherto unacknowledged grief. Disturbance can move about unpredictably. Our challenge is to locate and translate hidden, buried or displaced injury into the everyday language of human suffering where seeds can be sown for resolution. This multi-modal presentation is illustrated with clinical vignettes from groups at work and with collage and paintings. It opens with a Paul McCartney song, ‘Blackbird’ (1968), whose music and lyrics give historical significance to the struggle for human rights. Its closing vignettes explore ‘tools for conviviality’ with images of lost and found brotherhood and a spontaneous online ceremony of eating together in China. The paintings of Morris Nitsun bring us to an ultimate agency for change generated by small groups—the shifting mood-scape of their dynamic life. One image conveys the tragedy and desolation of the pandemic, and another offers the natural world’s consolation in beauty.