Notes on Billow’s Relational Approach to Group Leadership, September 2017¹

Abstract

Legend has it that during one of AGPA's two-day institutes, as the group members sat down, they began looking around but could not find the group leader. After some time had passed, and no leader was identified, the members alerted the conference organizers to the missing leader. It turned out that the leader was indeed in the room, but that-loyal to his Tavistock approach-he simply waited to see (and later analyse) how the group would handle his refusal to lead. The group analytic tradition similarly subscribes to the notion that the leader ought to refuse the group's desire for him to lead. As Anthony writes: 'He (the conductor) "defaults" on the group's expectation of his leadership. .. This point of view regards the need for leadership as a symptom of the group that is curable only by a therapist who does not lead' (Anthony, 1991: 85). Billow (this issue) departs from that tradition, stating that 'groups do not flourish without active, ongoing leadership' (2017: 309). I am reminded of a comment I heard from one of my former supervisors, who was not a group person: 'How can the blind lead the blind?' At the time, I thought: 'Oh, he totally doesn't get it!' and was annoyed at yet another unappreciative comment about group therapy. But thinking back, there is some merit to his (rhetorical) question. In the absence of direction, how can we expect group members to know how to make use of group? Also, there is something quite judgmental about the notion that any dependency need is necessarily pathological. Having an uninvolved, or overly passive parent/therapist, can be just as traumatic as having an overly involved and intrusive one.

Embodied Minds in Motion (Engaging My Responders)

“…This turns me with gratitude to my responders-all damned good-and to D. Nitzgen (2017), who astutely assigned them to this three-part project. I have concentrated on the responses to Part III (Doron, 2017;Friedman, 2017;Gotz, 2017;Ofer, 2017;Tubert Oklander, 2017;Slonim, 2017;Weinberg, 2017). The responders of Parts I and II, not privy to its organic unity (and some seemed unfamiliar with my other writings), were at an assessment disadvantage.…”