Group Analysis in the Land of Milk and Honey by Robi Friedman and Yael Doron (review)

Abstract

issn 0362-4021 © 2018 Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society group, Vol. 42, No. 1, Spring 2018 69 1 Correspondence should be addressed to Stephanie Lemor, PsyD, 113 University Place, Suite 1014, New York, NY 10003. E-mail: DrStephanieLemor@gmail.com. Book Review Group Analysis in the Land of Milk and Honey. Edited by Robi Friedman and Yael Doron. London: Karnac Books, 2017, 315 pp. Reviewed by Stephanie Lemor1 In Group Analysis in the Land of Milk and Honey, editors Robi Friedman and Yael Doron cull 20 essays to illustrate the richness of group analysis in Israel. This book highlights key dynamics in group therapy as they pertain to diversity, immigration, trauma, and social identity in Israel, a country fraught with a history of both loss and hope. Overall, the book is highly informative and succeeds in drawing a thorough and clear picture of group therapy in Israel. The book is divided into three sections: Theory, Practice, and Applications of Group Analysis. These sections are put together with the goal of taking the reader from the broad to the specific. In the introduction, the editors introduce the work of S. H. Foulkes by way of a brief review of the background of group analysis. Foulkes’s theory of group therapy includes psychoanalytic concepts of play, transactional exchanges, mirroring, and the role of the conductor/holder of the group. This summary is helpful as a refresher for current group leaders, while also providing a solid background for a novice therapist or reader outside the field. The editors depict the impact that the trauma of the individual has on the group and that the group has on the individual; these processes are tightly woven into the personal and relational matrix of the Israeli people. For me as a reader, the first section—Theory—stood out as the richest of the three sections of the book by way of context and case illustration. The first two essays focus on concepts of values and ethics. The authors posit that the group, both therapeutic and societal, becomes a therapeutic agent and aims to maintain the value of mutuality by way of open affiliations rather than an exclusive, us-versus-them perspective. They go on to suggest that this is in parallel to Israel’s history, which has 70 lemor been marked more by division than by unity. The third essay introduces Foulkes’s concept of the foundational matrix, which author Biran posits to mean aspects of an individual’s biology, culture, religion, and economy that unconsciously influence his or her role in the group context. This essay explores the way this foundational matrix of Israeli culture—built on the traumatic history of the Jewish people and collective memories of trauma—can affect a therapeutic group. The editors of the volume wrote the fifth and sixth essays of the book. In the fifth essay, editor Friedman talks about the biblical story of Isaac’s binding as the origin of the concept of scapegoating and sacrifice. These concepts are well known within the group therapy literature. Drawing a connection to the biblical establishes a unique perspective. This essay also highlighted shame and guilt in the group. The leader has an important role in minimizing the fear of annihilation (as Isaac had felt), instead helping groups to relate to each other innately. In the sixth essay, Doron describes the process of introducing into an already established group a new member who had been a victim of friendly fire when serving in the military a few years prior. This new group member, who had suffered both physical loss of his arm and mental and emotional loss, became subject to a new round of “friendly fire” by the other group members. Doron points out that group ended up “re-enacting in the here and now” the intolerable experience of a “‘friendly fire’ attack” (p. 81). She explores her own “blindness” as the leader and highlights for all members of the group, who inevitably either served in or had friends or family in the army, both the new member’s past injury and his current injury connected to the group in the here and now as they turned on the new member and...