Editorial: Might Psychoanalysis Be of Use to Systemic Therapists?

Team work and group supervision are essential features of the systemic model, yet there is surprisingly little literature on the impact of group process on both group supervision and team‐based therapy. Beginning with two vignettes which evoke some aspects of group process and are based on the personal experiences of the authors, this paper will review the literature on working in teams from within a systemic perspective.1Early models of teams and group processes within the literature will be criticized for their over‐reliance on technique; more recent models for their over‐reliance on collaboration. It will be argued that some systemic approaches to understanding teams can lead to group process issues becoming marginalized and covert, and therefore inevitably more difficult to address. However, viewing supervision groups as ‘social constructions’ is seen as a position offering more possibilities and, it will be argued, opens a pathway to embracing ideas from within psychoanalytic thinking on group process. Here ideas on group functioning, including the theories of, for example, Foulkes and Bion will be briefly reviewed and their implications for helping both supervisors and teams conceptualize group process discussed.

Section: Some 'Both-and' Positionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking again at the team dimension in systemic psychotherapy: is attending to group process a critical context for practice?

Clarke¹,

Rowan

2008

“…However, there has been an interest in recent years in attempting to 'build bridges' between the two schools, identifying shared aims and wondering whether the 'differences are more imagined than real' (Holmes, 1985;McFadyen, 1997). We would wish to echo Speed's (1997) editorial that 'An appreciation of what may be similar should not blind us to an exploration of what is different'. We would go further and say that the differences need to be recognized and appreciated for theoretical development to take place.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minding the Gap not Bridging the Gap: Family Therapy From a Psychoanalytic Perspective

Brodie

Wright

2002

Following recent interest in this journal in building bridges between a psychoanalytic and systemic approach to family therapy (Vol. 19, 1997), the authors take up the debate. A clinical vignette from a recent article is used for discussion and, in order to describe further work from a psychoanalytic perspective, two case vignettes are presented. The comparisons are discussed with particular reference to the concepts of projective identification, transference/countertransference and internal object relations.

“…Crago, 1998;Flaskas, 1997;Ingeborg et al, 1998;Leupnitz, 1997;McFayden, 1997;Pockock, 1997;Speed, 1997). Casting off a mantle of theoretical correctness, family therapists have taken back what was dismissed or split off in the founding of their discipline, namely things psychoanalytic (Byng-Hall, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a common ground in psychoanalysis and family therapy: on knowing not to know

Larner

2000

In this paper a common ground between psychoanalysis and family therapy is discussed in terms of postmodern theorizing in both disciplines. Recent systemic, narrative or social constructionist thinking in psychoanalysis and a psychoanalytic turn in family therapy offers the possibility of a shared epistemology. This is described in terms of a critical not‐knowing stance which allows for the therapist’s/analyst’s contribution of meaning, interpretation and knowledge in therapeutic conversation. Here the holding of not knowing and knowing together provides a narrative container for personal meaning and thinking to develop. This ‘knowing not to know’ is what a postmodern psychoanalysis has in common with family therapy: both are ways of being with persons to help them develop and hold their own knowing. This therapeutic process is illustrated in a clinical vignette of narrative child family therapy. For what one knows does not belong to oneself. (Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, p. 898)