Group Therapy

The Dynamic Foundation: Harnessing Difference within the Matrix

“…Foulkes did not elaborate on the concept of a social unconscious but it has been later defined and explored in a number of different ways by authors such as Hopper (2001, 2003), Dalal (2001), Weinberg (2007) and Doron (2017). What Foulkes did elaborate on, however, was his notion of a transpersonal network (Barwick and Weegmann, 2018). He believed that selective mental processes—that is to say, those interactions that happen instinctively, intuitively, and unconsciously in line with one’s inner world and proclivities—also described as ‘resonance’ (Foulkes, 1964: 290), not only travel between and within persons, but across them too.…”

‘I am not a philosopher?’ A response to Vic Schermer’s ‘Four modalities of the experience of others in groups’

“…Perhaps something of my initial reticence arose from having spent some considerable time over the past few years trying, in a modest way, to articulate a ‘fusion of horizons’ (Gadamer, 1975) within the field of group-analytic psychotherapy (see Barwick and Weegmann, 2018); the bringing together of different ways of seeing that is core not only to group analysis’ formation (and, I believe, future development) but also to its clinical practice: a facilitated encounter with the horizons of others. Since such encounter both threatens participant identity as well as promising potential enrichment, inter-disciplinarity needs to be understood as both intellectual and psychic challenge—and one not to be underestimated.…”

“…‘Body’ is the second of Schermer’s modalities, and a key concept he uses to describe the embodied psychological activity at work within this ‘conduit within which people find each other’ is empathy. I have indicated elsewhere (Barwick and Weegmann, 2018) about how inter-subjectively oriented approaches offer an enrichment of group analysis’ understanding of how groups can provide an empathic milieu appropriate for redressing developmental deficit—at heart, what the once much maligned Alexander and French (1946) referred to as ‘corrective emotional experience’. More accurately, within a group context, Pines (1990) refers to ‘emerging experience’: ‘the appropriate response, the good-enough gesture, which enables the patient to move from an embedded defensive position towards intersubjectivity’ (cited in Brown, 1994: 89)—what Brown calls ‘self-development in interaction’ (Brown, 1994: 98).…”

Passing from relations to narratives. A review of Martin Weegmann’s reflections on the predicament of group analysis in contemporary society

“…Martin Weegmann is a prolific writer and certainly one of the most distinguished voices of group analysis today. Most recently, he and Nick Barwick provided us with a most comprehensive introduction to contemporary group analytic theory and practice (Barwick and Weegmann, 2018). Moreover, in addition to this Weegmann also published two full books of theoretical, clinical and cultural reflections which are reviewed here: The world within.…”