What does group analytic psychotherapy offer people who work in, or with, organisations and work teams?
The central group analytic idea is that people are fundamentally social beings and that society is as much within us as it is outside us. Siegmund Foulkes, the writer and practitioner who developed the practices of clinical group analysis, observed that everything is a communication, everything is meaningful – all can be unconscious interpretations of what is really going on[2].
UCD’s School of Medicine now offers a stand-alone Graduate Certificate in Group Analytic Studies. After completion, trainees can go on to take a two-year Professional Masters in applied group analytic studies. Applied group analytic principles and techniques offer a unique understanding to leaders, teams and organisational development experts, in the analysis of unconscious processes in organisations and groups. Through participation in reflective practice/work discussion groups, case study seminars, theory discussion groups and an experiential group, trainees have an opportunity to reflect on group interactions, relationships, and leadership phenomena. Trainees will also explore their own style of relating within a group. This is a course that provides training in the here and now, to observe and understand our own and others’ experiences in group.
It is not practical or feasible to analyse and consider absolutely everything that happens in an organisation. How does a group analytically trained organisation consultant or reflective practice facilitator apply these ideas? The task is to find ways to bring people together, to contain unmanageable levels of anxiety. If people feel relatively safe in a carefully facilitated setting, they are more likely able to speak about what is really going on. For instance, one of the most common group dynamics in a staff team or group is the anxiety that results from the projective processes around an individual who is perceived as a troublemaker.[3] This person has become the object for everyone’s frustration and anger. The individual may be the person at staff meetings who speaks as if they have an irresistible urge to say what they think everyone else is thinking but not saying. The level of anxiety and fear this dynamic generates – and its reverberating consequences across the organisation – cannot be underestimated.
Group analytic principles offer skills and techniques to bring understanding to this dynamic. For instance, group analytic thinking assumes that the troublesome individual, is speaking on behalf of the group. They might be trying to name something that is being avoided by management, or they might be insisting that the rules of a protocol be minutely and tediously followed because they recall the mistakes of past processes. Aside from the irritation, the rest of the group will tend to deny what the scapegoated person is trying to say because it may involve more work, expose a weakness that has been successfully concealed, or more generally reveal a reality that has been systemically papered over for so long, no one can contemplate its direct confrontation. The scapegoat ceases to carry the group’s burden when the underlying issues are revealed and confronted.
A further group analytic assumption: it is normal to be afraid of groups. This fear is fundamental to the human species. We are born into a human group – the family – and we are completely dependent on that group for our survival, love and care. Workplace groups are potentially reenacted settings of earlier experiences in which we may have felt terrified of being judged, misunderstood and/or humiliated. This aspect of organisation life is rarely acknowledged or made explicit.[4].
The central task of applied group analysis is the management and containment of this level of anxiety. The skill set learnt in the training includes being aware of the anxiety, feeling it, assessing its intensity, sitting with it, and not trying to fix it. This may seem counter cultural but the group analytic consultant knows that whatever it is that is happening has to be worked through by the group. Otherwise, the dynamic will simply continue and be repeated. The scapegoat may leave the organisation much to everyone’s relief but will soon be replaced by someone else.
Thorough dynamic administration – a central pillar of group analytic practice – provides the frame for applied work. It may involve recruiting and interviewing the appropriate staff members; contracting the group’s terms and conditions; agreeing and setting the boundaries, and agreeing how to work together. These component parts provide for, and model, a developmental process in which the group begins to trust the authority of the consultant – who is also the leader of the group. By taking on the responsibility of the task of the group, the group analytic consultant assumes the members will get on with the work of learning from each other to grow and develop the organisation’s purpose in the service of the clients.
At the same time, the consultant will be aware that, at some stage, there will be a wave of fear, conflict, disappointment or anger that will need to be held and contained. The group analytic idea that conflict – the tendency in all groups to be self-destructive[5] – is a valuable opportunity, is unusual given today’s pressure to provide ‘positive working environments’. Instead of resolving the conflict in order to get rid of it, the dynamic is recognised, acknowledged and reoriented towards creative ways of correcting dysfunctional behaviours or structures.
Trainees of applied group analysis will gain:
- A knowledge into the theoretical underpinnings of group analysis and its emphasis on the social nature of the individual.
- An understanding of the unconscious processes, including the social unconscious, at work within group life, personal and professional.
- A capacity to be better able to positively influence dynamics within group life to foster healthier group functioning.
- An increased capacity to recognise personal and professional boundaries and the influence of these on relational life.
- communication skills that will enhance their participation in personal and professional group life.
Applied group analysis can be used in:
- Reflective practice group or work discussion group/learning groups
- Clinical individual and group supervision
- Team supervision
- Team development – e.g. leadership
- Balint Groups (https://balintsociety.org.uk)
- Organisation consulting
- Role Consultation and Role Analysis[6]
These skills are used with medical clinicians, psychotherapists, social workers, occupational therapists and all the disciplines that form teamwork in health settings like hospitals and community mental health services. They can also be used with Board and non-clinical or administrative functions in the same types of organisations. Finally, these skills can be applied usefully in charities, advocacy-type organisations and a range of not for profits that are values based. Many of these organisations provide services to vulnerable groups and populations with highly complex needs. Without supervisory and/or reflective supports, it is inevitable that these organisations’ cultures and behaviour will come to mimic or mirror the cultures and behaviours or those whom they serve, thereby reducing the ability of the organisations to promote growth, learning and development for their clients.
Further reading:
The Art and Science of Working Together: Practising Group Analysis in Teams and Organisations, Edited by Christine Thornton. 2019. Oxon, Routledge. This is an excellent, very accessible book with wide ranging examples of practice and thinking.
The Unconscious at Work: Individual and Organisational Stress in The Human Services, Editors, Anton Obholzer and Dr. Vega Zagier Roberts. 1994. London, Routledge. This peerless text provides a thorough understanding of unconscious processes in organisations.
Psycho-social Explorations of Trauma, Exclusion and Violence: Un-housed Minds and Inhospitable Environments. By Chris Scanlon and John Adlam. 2022. Routledge, London. Chris Scanlon, a group analyst, has provided a library of reading on the art and the tribulations of facilitating reflective practice groups in organisations. This book is one example of his work.
The Workplace Within: Psychodynamics of Organisational Life, by Larry Hirschhorn. 1988. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.
Working Below the Surface: The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organizations.
Editors, Clare Huffington, William Halton, David Armstrong and Jane Pooley. 2004. Routledge, London. Tavistock Clinic Series.
[2] Written in 1968 and republished in S.H. Foulkes (1990) Selected Papers, Karnac Books, London. See page 172.
[3] See Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts, ‘The Troublesome individual and The Troubled Institution’ in The Unconscious at Work: Individual and Organisational Stress in The Human Services, Editors, Anton Obholzer and Dr. Vega Zagier Roberts. 1994. London, Routledge. .
[4] ‘Collective life is saturated with powerful emotional forces’. See full article: Maltz, Marc & Krantz, James. 1997. ‘A Framework for Consulting to Organisational Role’ in Consulting Psychology Journal Vol. 49. No. 2 pages 137-151.
[5] See Morris Nitsun’s The Anti-Group: Destructive forces in the group and their creative potential, 1996. Karnac Books.
[6] See the work of Professor Susan Long including her peerless text, The Perverse Organisation and its Deadly Sins. 2008. Karnac Books, Routledge.