Analytic Group Psychotherapy Research Articles

Book Review: From the Couch to the Circle. Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice

Book Review: From the Couch to the Circle. Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice

Psychoanalytic Group Psychotherapy

ABSTRACTThis piece explores the principles of analytic group psychotherapy which inform the understanding of psychopathology, the conditions and goals of treatment, the use of the group, and the role of the therapist. The clinical example will be considered primarily in contrast to the analytic approach presented here, from which it differs in many significant ways.

Zakasnela psihoterapija darovitih - prikaz slučaja

Leading authors in research on giftedness highlight that in childhood the talent exists only as a potential for future achievements. On the other hand, lately, the aspects of atypical and unevenly development have been defined. They can slow or even prevent a person from realizing achievements that are in correlation with the potential that has been observed in childhood. Moreover, the more cognitive development or the development of a specific gift is pronounced, the uneven development and personality traits may be pronounced as well, with a risk of developmental disorders, psychiatric symptoms and emergence of psychopathology rising. Even asking for help on time, after the first symptoms are recognized, does not give security. Psychological and psychotherapeutic help need to be long term and well structured. In this paper we show unstructured and discontinuous psychiatric treatment to a multi-gifted patient, who started his psychotherapeutic treatment with group analytic psychotherapy in his late adult life.

Review of Listening with the fourth ear: Unconscious dynamics in analytic group psychotherapy.

Review of Listening with the fourth ear: Unconscious dynamics in analytic group psychotherapy.

Introduction

Introduction issn 0362-4021 © 2017 Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society group, Vol. 41, No. 1, Spring 2017 7 In this issue, we have a nicely balanced combination of articles and reviews. Chris Mertzanakis discusses group work with sex offenders in prison in the United Kingdom, and Yaniv Spinzy describes the use of computers in group work with schizophrenic patients, while Michelle Miller Bohls discusses the need to discuss issues relating to money in group therapy. In the latest installment of Thinking About Our Work, Dominick Grundy, editor of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, addresses issues of work and writing. Claudia Arlo, Richard M. Billow, Nina W. Brown, and Sara Emerson respond to his essay, and then Dr. Grundy replies to their comments. We close with four book reviews: Chera M. Finnis reviews From the Couch to the Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice by John R. Schlapobersky; Ken Jaeger reviews The Psychodynamics of Social Networking: Connected-Up Instantaneous Culture and the Self by Aaron Balick; Bennett Roth reviews Wilfred R. Bion: War Memoirs, 1917–1919, edited by Francesca Bion; and Kathryn A. Keegan reviews Treating Women With Substance Use Disorders: The Women’s Recovery Group Manual by Shelly F. Greenfield. As always, we welcome your feedback. —Lee Kassan, Editor ...

From the Couch to the Circle. Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice

Recipient of the 2017 Anne Alonso Award for Excellence in Psychodynamic Group Therapy, conferred by the Group Foundation for Advancing Mental Health, part of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. From the Couch to the Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice is a handbook of group therapy and a guide to the group-analytic model - the prevailing form of group therapy in Europe. The book draws on both John Schlapobersky’s engagement as a practitioner and the words and experience of people in groups as they face psychotherapy’s key challenges - understanding and change. This book provides a manual of practice for therapists’ use that includes detailed descriptions of groups at work; accounts of therapists’ own experience and the issues they face in themselves and in their groups. The book is devoted to the Group-Analytic model but the other principally psychodynamic models of group therapy - the Tavistock, Interpersonal, Psychodynamic, Modern Analytic and Structural/Systemic models - are brought into a comparative discussion and drawn upon to create an integrated and coherent approach. The book is divided into three sections: Foundations – aimed at practitioners using groups of any kind and working at every level, including those providing supportive psychotherapy and providing groups for psychosis, trauma, the elderly, people at risk, the elderly and children; The Group-Analytic Model – defines the group-analytic model at a basic and advanced level; The Dynamics of Change – aimed at group analysts, psychotherapists and psychologists providing short-term psychotherapy and long-term group analysis The book is illustrated with clinical vignettes including incisive, instructive commentaries to explain the concepts in use. It is intended for those seeking psychotherapy, whether to resolve personal problems or to find new sources of meaning in their lives. It is also intended for policy-makers in mental health, students of different models of psychotherapy and the psychosocial field. The comparative discussion running through the text about methods and models of practice will likely be of interest to the wider mental health and psychotherapy fields. The author draws together the inherited wisdom of group analysis since Foulkes’ time and makes his own lasting contribution. From the Couch to the Circle will be an invaluable, accessible resource for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, family therapists, academics, psychologists, mental health practitioners, academics and teachers in psychotherapy.

The Conductor’s Self-disclosure of Negative Countertransference in Group Analytic Psychotherapy

In this article, I will present the contribution of the conductor’s self-disclosure of negative countertransference in group analytic psychotherapy and its advantage over interpretation in the working through of projective identification that leads to a therapeutic impasse. I will also discuss the issues of timing of self-disclosure and spontaneity versus judicious self-disclosure. The presented ideas will be demonstrated through vignettes from analytic groups that I conduct.

From feelings of imprisonment to group cohesion: A qualitative analysis of group analytic psychotherapy with dual diagnosed patients admitted to an acute inpatient psychiatric unit

Objectives: Group cohesion, the establishment of hope, and the expression of feelings have been said to be the basic ingredients of group psychotherapy. To date, there is few literature describing therapeutic processes in short stay settings such as acute psychiatric wards and with special patient groups such as addictions. Our goal with this study is to describe and analyze group processes in such contexts. Methods: We used a qualitative methodology combining constant comparative methods and hermeneutical triangulation to analyze therapeutic narratives in the context of a group analytic process carried following Foulkes’ and Yalom’s styles. Results: The results provide a picture of the therapeutic process including the use of norms to strengthen group cohesion facilitating the expression of emotions in early stages of group development. Conclusions: This analysis is intended to be a guide for practitioners implementing group therapy in contexts involving several constraints, such as acute psychiatric wards.

Book Review: Listening with the Fourth Ear: Unconscious Dynamics in Analytic Group Psychotherapy

Book Review: Listening with the Fourth Ear: Unconscious Dynamics in Analytic Group Psychotherapy

Extreme trauma in a polluted area: Bonds and relational transformations in an Italian community

In the community of Casale Monferrato, exposure to asbestos has led to an extremely traumatic situation that has encompassed cancer and death and affected a variety of social and environmental aspects of both individuals and the community. When an entire community is severely traumatized, psychoanalytic group therapy seems to be the most suitable therapeutic setting: it allows for the historization of the event and the creation of multiple narratives of somatopsychic suffering, producing a transformative effect on nonmentalized emotional aggregates. Making reference to clinical material, I will show how the possibility of sharing, with other minds, the meaning of the trauma also brought into the field each participant's vital aspects, possibly not very intense in each individual but consistently present in the functioning of the mind of the group. I will also illustrate how this led to the development of a new and more mature psychic asset, with which painful and deadly experiences connected to the trauma could be faced.

Book Review: Group Analytic Psychotherapy: Working with affective, anxiety, and personality disorders

Book Review: Group Analytic Psychotherapy: Working with affective, anxiety, and personality disorders

Gruppenanalyse - Individualpsychologie - neuere Entwicklungen

Summary In the context of psychotherapy within the German health service, the number of people making use of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic group therapy provision remains miserably low. Research results as well as general experience have both proved that (given a correct indication) this form of therapy is at least as effective as individual psychotherapy. Not many of the therapists trained in group therapy actually practise this method. Furthermore, too few group therapists have been trained in recent years. Foulkes’ group therapy seems to be the method of choice for Adlerian therapists. Some recent developments in group psychotherapy are discussed here, with particular reference to Foulkes’ theory of levels, which offers a complex understanding of groups, not only in the field of psychotherapy. The leader of the group takes up a specific position at the edge of the group, both in Foulkes’ theory and in the socalled »Gottinger« method, which is seen to be the second major type of group therapy. Indica...

The Future Revisited

45 1 Formerly Consultant Psychotherapist, Cassel, St. George’s, and Maudsley Hospitals and Tavistock Clinic. Correspondence should be addressed to Malcolm Pines, MRCP, MRCPsych, DPM, 21 Dealtry Road, London sw15 6nl. E-mail: malcpines@btinternet.com. I am happy for the opportunity to re-view my article of 2000. I wrote the original paper at the age of 75, and now aged 90, I have a retrospective over what I’ve written then and what has been happening for the last 15 years in our increasingly war-ravaged and conflict-torn world. Shepherding group analysis is no longer my responsibility, but I enjoy the investigation to which this request has given rise. The work of Trigant Burrow has received a great deal of attention since the publication of Edie and Giorgio Pertegato’s (2013) book From Psychoanalysis to Group Analysis: The Pioneering Work of Trigant Burrow. This book has stimulated a great deal of interest in Burrow and in the implications of his pioneering work. In my 2000 article, I wrote that Foulkes was unable to create a comprehensive deep theory based on his work. This has been remedied by several important publications. H. L. Behr and L. Hearst’s (2005) Group-Analytic Psychotherapy: A Meeting of Minds provides a detailed, comprehensive account of group analysis, including history and specialized applications. The book by Tom Ormay (2012), The Social Nature of Persons: One Person Is No Person, provides a deep philosophical, psychological, and biological understanding of the nature of the human being, intrinsic relatedness, and how this leads to the evolution of group analytic psychotherapy. In late 2015, a very important monograph by my colleague and cowriter John Schlapobersky appeared, this time with him as the sole author (titled From the Couch to the Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice). (Schlapobersky and I have written together in the New Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry; Pines & Schlapobersky, 2000.) It provides the deepest and most comprehensive text that has been written. I quote from some of the endorsements, which show how welcome his book is and that it will lay the standard down for many years to come:

Clinical Wisdom

A diversity of cultural, economic and social factors influence our professional work as psychotherapists, and hardly anything we do with our patients is not dependent upon society’s political and moral choices. Moreover, what can be regarded as wisdom is difficult to agree upon, more so for group analysts. It must be felt wise, maybe more easily seen at a distance, and best found by asking men or women, in whom we trust. This article will explore fundamental ideas and assumptions regarding the art of helping patients by psychotherapy. The focus is on group analytic psychotherapy and the use of it in psychiatry. Some of the questions are: What shall be modified in the method and technique to make it helpful to the patients, and will it be possible to meet the requirements of validation from the public health services? Can research and the researcher be of use in group analysis and do we at all have a mutual case? Clinical knowledge from psychotherapy research and retrieved reflections from wise colleagues, on what can be regarded the most essential experiences in therapeutic groups, are presented. Emphasis will be on the therapist’s personal development and existential challenges. Shakespeare’s tale about ‘the choice of the three caskets’ illustrates some moral choices, which can also be regarded as choices for the therapist.

On Making A Home Amongst Strangers: The Paradox of Group Psychotherapy

This lecture explores how the ambient network amongst group analysts has grown from Foulkes’ own biography through figurations of home in group psychotherapy where members’ attunement and alignment transpose longing into belonging. The three underlying dimensions of group analytic psychotherapy—the relational, reflective and reparative—are described and illustrated with clinical vignettes and music. These dimensions are found working in the current, transference, projective and primordial domains of small therapeutic groups and in the large group dynamics of the lecture’s audience.

A Logical Framework for Functional Analytic Group Therapy

Functional analytic group therapy (FAGT) is based on the idea that, in effective group therapy, the problems clients seek treatment for actually happen in the interaction with other group members, which allows the therapist to assess the problems and do therapeutic work on them in vivo. This paper proposes a logical framework that describes interpersonal sequences in which functional analytic principles help harness natural exchanges among group members for effective therapy. The sequences typically start when group interaction poses difficulties to which the client responds with clinically relevant behavior, either his or her usual problem behavior or improved target behavior. Effective exchanges in the group naturally weaken the problem behavior and reinforce target behavior. The group is an ineffective agent when it reinforces problem behavior or weakens target behavior. The FAGT therapist continuously assesses and, when needed, improves group interaction patterns by weakening ineffective group patterns and shaping effective exchanges in the group. The article provides examples of these logical sequences and offers recommendations about making groups more therapeutically effective.

Group Analytic Psychotherapy in Brazil

Group analytic practice in Brazil began quite early. Highly influenced by the Argentinean Pichon-Rivière, it enjoyed a major development from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Beginning in the 1970s, different factors undermined its development and eventually led to its steep decline. From the mid 1980s on, the number of people looking for either group analytic psychotherapy or group analytic training decreased considerably. Group analytic psychotherapy societies struggled to survive and most of them had to close their doors in the 1990s and the following decade. Psychiatric reform and the new public health system have stimulated a new demand for groups in Brazil. Developments in the public and not-for-profit sectors, combined with theoretical and practical research in universities, present promising new perspectives for group analytic psychotherapy in Brazil nowadays.

Group Psychotherapy in Sweden

The paper presents an overview of the national developments of group psychotherapy (GPS) in Sweden during the period from World War II until the present time. Methods and concepts, imported primarily from England and the United States, inspired trainings and widespread psychodynamic and group analytic applications in schools, health treatment, and social care. Education in psychotherapy and GPS at universities opened new therapeutic and vocational areas during the period 1970–2005. Increasing criticism of psychodynamics, as in other Western societies, but more radical in Sweden, has in the last decades made group analytic GPS diminish in favor of cognitive behavioral therapy models. Prospects for GPS further development may presently look bleak but, in a longer perspective, are promising.

When Hopper met Grossmark: A review of the International Conference “The road not taken”, a Relational Discourse on Pioneers in Individual and Group Analytic Therapy

When Hopper met Grossmark: A review of the International Conference “The road not taken”, a Relational Discourse on Pioneers in Individual and Group Analytic Therapy

Massive Trauma in A Community Exposed to Asbestos: Thinking and Dissociation among the Inhabitants of Casale Monferrato

In Casale Monferrato, asbestos exposure has been a traumatic occurrence that has caused cancer and death among the town's inhabitants, resulting in the loss of trust and hope with regard to the future and the loss of healthy aspects of the self. This traumatic history has been denied for many years – part of an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude that is often justified by financial interests. When traumatization is due to the careless behaviour of the owners of the major economic resources in a community, group identity is deeply affected. In such a situation, psychoanalytic group therapy seems to be the best means to historicize the event and create multiple narratives of somatopsychic suffering. In this paper, we present the experience of the first multifamily group in Casale Monferrato, focusing on the possibility of ‘diluting’ transference‐ and countertransference‐related feelings of helplessness, thereby making them more bearable and thinkable. Sharing the meaning of the trauma also highlighted vital aspects in the functioning of the mind of the group, leading to a new and more mature way of facing illness and death.