Adolescences: Adolescence Re-staged. The Interplay between Small Groups and the Large Group in a Group Analytic Training Situation

Abstract

The author focuses on observed clinical material of interplay between the large group and small groups in a training situation. Cross border interplay have seldom been described: specific material from a large group setting is brought up in the context of another, the small group, or vice versa. These phenomena need to be conceptualized. The author makes use of Freud’s and Mario Erdheim’s concept of the antagonism between family and civilization, developing a conceptualization from Erdheim’s interpretation of adolescence as a dynamic factor of progress in civilization. The interplay between the small and large group is seen as a re-staging of the adolescent process. After applying this concept to the described material, the implications and consequences for group-analytic interpretation are discussed.