Close companionship, when suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, it (knowledge) is generated in the soul and becomes self-sustaining'. ( Plato 380 BC)
According to Plato, we all learn best in relationships with others. The effect of companionship as a spur to learning is identified in Plato's letter, quoted above, where he scares that knowledge is best acquired in a setting where people are together sharing with one another. When we gain insight into whatever it is we are trying to understand, this is, in Plato's view, nearly always consequent upon our conversational exchanges with one another.
What is a group?
Physical proximity is not enough to turn a small number of people into a group, so what do we mean by 'group'? If a number of people gather sharing some purpose or concern and stay together long enough for the development of a network which includes them all, they can then be recognised as a group. Suppose a number of people take the lift to the sixteenth floor of an apartment block building. All of them are huddled together in a small space but there is no communication between them, they cannot be considered to be a group in any psychological sense. Suddenly the lift breaks down between floors, their safety becomes uncertain and there is a need for some immediate action. Under the impact of this external event they begin to share feelings of distress and anxiety. Each communicates something and each responds to the communication of the others. All of these communications and responses can be seen as a pattern of interaction and it's the recognition of this interaction chat turns a collection of people into a group.
Reflection of a group experience
A small number of psychotherapy students came together at weekly intervals, and spent an hour and a half in each other's company. We met as equals, we sat in a circle and talked or remained silent together. No focus was suggested nor was any topic for discussion supplied. As members of a group we were expected to communicate. Feelings of anxiety, confusion, uncertainty and insecurity prevailed as we sat in chat circle for the first few sessions. What do we share in a group like this? What do we need to do to belong! How will we even survive? There was a leader, with special knowledge and skills, who was meant to help us but she seemed to exercise less direct control over the proceedings than one normally expects from a leader. How come she doesn't participate in the group? After all she is responsible for us! Lets unite and challenge her authority and lack of guidance!
Being members of this analytical group was both intense and demanding. The experience of an unstructured group situation was new and frightening. There was always a danger that too much would be revealed. The less structure there was in the group, the less were we able to hide ourselves in stereotyped roles, and the less predictable was our own behaviour and that of the others. As time went by, the group developed and our anxiety decreased, we learnt that the focus was upon what goes on in the group, the dynamic interchanges, the contributions we made and those of the leader. As group cohesion developed we trusted the process more and learnt to be more accepting and respecting of our differences. We could then help each other to make connections between past and present and between our inner and outer worlds.
Needs of the group
Every one of us is driven by certain emotional needs. Though we may not be conscious of the way in which they influence our conduct, we all try to arrange our lives and our relationships with other people so that these needs can be satisfied. We are aware that
we feel more comfortable in certain situations and less comfortable in others. We like to play certain roles, to make certain type of relationships, and to be treated in certain ways. We are attracted to the company of people who will allow us or encourage us to
behave in the way we wish, and who will give us the responses we seek. Wherever we are, we try to influence or manipulate our associates so as to elicit from them the behaviour that the satisfaction of our needs requires. We try to avoid situations that we find unsatisfactory, or disturbing, or frustrating. It we cannot avoid such situations, we look for some way to change them or to lessen their impact.
These basic emotional needs, which determine so much of our behaviour in groups as in other situations, have their origins in our earliest relationships, and are shaped and influenced, or confirmed by all our subsequent experiences. Different needs, will be activated by different circumstances. When a person is with a group of other people, the situation in itself and his feelings about the other people present will determine which of his habitual needs he will experience and how he will endeavour to satisfy them. His behaviour will also be influenced by his feelings about the group itself, and the relationship prevailing between the group and the outside world. One member of a group may be witty and fun-loving responding to every topic, entertaining everyone with her charm and stories. This could be part of a characteristic pattern of behaviour which she habitually employs in such situation. If an interpretation for it is sought, it might be found in terms of early experiences which have made her equate lack of notice with lack of love and feel frustrated if she is not given attention. Alternatively, this behaviour might be the result of inter-relationships in this particular group and be specific to this situation; there may be a person present whom she particularly wishes to impress. At another level, it could represent her reaction to a particular topic under discussion, she might want to divert attention from this topic, or to ensure chat it is treated flippantly. How she actually behaves will depend upon the other people present.
Our group included both talkative and less talkative members. Although the importance of verbal communication is stressed, the silent member will also be participating and communicating, at a nonverbal level, even through his silence. Even if he says little, he may be feeling much. Nonetheless, the growth and development of the ability to communicate in words about personal difficulties, to make one's feelings explicit and understood, and to help others to do the same, can indicate the progress of the individual and of the group. Participation in the group provides the individual member with two different types of information: he hears about the problems of the other members, and he perceives their reactions to his own communications. Each sharing leads to another, and as the other members disclose more about themselves, he finds it increasingly possible to do likewise. Thus the information available to him becomes more relevant and more important. He may be able to test out the possibility of behaving and responding in new ways, and find that there is no need to be so dominating or suspicious in his personal relationships.
The Group Matrix
The psychoanalytic approach is characterised by the belief that every piece of human behaviour has meaning at two levels, the manifest and the latent, the conscious and the unconscious. There is the everyday level of conscious response to the perceived realities of the situation in which the individual finds himself, and there is the level at which behaviour can only be comprehended in terms of a response to unconscious drives and basic emotional needs. Although it is incorrect to think that psychoanalytic concepts derived from the study of individuals can be applied directly to groups, the concept of conscious and unconscious levels is fundamental to both fields.
Bion regard the group activity as a regression to the earliest stages of mental life. In his work he give central importance to projective identification and to the interplay between paranoidschizoid and depressive positions. However, a more interesting framework for studying the behaviour of the group as a whole is supplied by the concepts of Group Analytic Psychotherapy formulated by Foulkes. Foulkes drew an analogy between the group and a jigsaw puzzle, where a person is like a single piece of the whole jigsaw which has no real meaning on its own. Once he enters an analytical group he begins to reconstruct the original jigsaw of his family by shaping the other group members to fit. Foulkes described the individual's disturbance as an incompatibility between the person and her family of origin. He believed that the infant introjects patterns of relationships such that 'the so-called inner processes in the individual are internalisations of the forces operating m the group to which he belongs' (Foulkes 1990 p.212). By this he means that 'so-called inner processes' have more to do with internalised group dynamics.
He makes use of the concept of a group matrix, a network comprising all the communications and interactions that have taken place in a group from its inception to the present. The matrix, which is equivalent to the history of the group, is' growing and developing all the time and becoming more and more complex. Sometimes it is referred to as a kind of energy system which is formed by the exchanges between the members of the group. Specific group events, take place against the background of this matrix and cannot be understood in isolation. It is only when they are related to their context of the group matrix, that makes it possible for the group analyst to regard all spontaneous contributions as equivalent to the free association of psychoanalysis. The group avails itself now of one speaker, now of another, but it is always the transpersonal system which is sensitised and responds, people are rooted in the matrix and emerge out of it. In this sense we can assume the existence of a group mind in the same way as we assume the existence of an individual mind.
Jung used the theory of a collective unconscious to explain the existence of certain psychic and behavioural characteristics in human beings. These characteristics, while achieving unique expression, in each individual are at the same time universally present in aII human beings.
The collective unconscious has often been compared to the group matrix. Both of them are considered to be a source of healing. They are not visible and are intangible but the effects of both these concepts can be observed in groups.
Jung described the collective unconscious as a rhizome out of which separate flowers grow, the flower dies but the rhizome remains, so too does the matrix of the group when one member departs.
The Group Conductor
The group conductor is used as a transference figure by the group. He wishes to help all the group members to become as fully involved as possible, to relate not only to him but also to each other, and to look at each other for responses to, and comments on, their communications. He does not wish to be the main focus in the group neither does he wish to 'lead' it. It is for this reason that Foulkes does not use the term 'leader' but prefers to speak of a group 'conductor'. The leader is not a leader and neither is he a teacher nor a counsellor.
The group often try to cast him into one of these roles and he will need to consider this attempt, in relation to the state of the group as a whole and the processes operating in it. He will perhaps consider that the attempt means that the group as a whole is trying to avoid dealing with some particular problem, is showing a reluctance to take the next step forward, wishing instead to substitute some mysterious solution and to return to a state of dependence upon a parental figure.
The progress of every psychotherapeutic group is hindered by obstacles. These obstacles are introduced by individual members and accepted by the group as a whole because they provide a temporary solution to a current group problem. Through his refusal to accept the role pressed upon him, by denying the group a solution or a dependent relationship, he may be able to re-confront it with the problem which it is trying to evade. Or he may put into words what is going on and to draw the attention of the group to the meaning of its own behaviour. This brings us to the psychotherapist's role in the group, his analytic function of making the unconscious conscious through his interpretations.
The interpretations of the conductor in the group differ from those of the individual
psychotherapist in that they are not centred upon individuals and, therefore, they do not attempt to trace the transference relationship back to its roots. The past history of each individual is separate and unique and belongs to that individual alone, it is only in the 'here and now' situation in the group that individual concerns meet, and that a focus can be found which belongs to all members together and which conjointly affects them all. The conductor behaves as if every communication can, in some sense, be taken to come from the group a whole. He needs to have the ability to keep himself as an observer of the conscious as well as the unconscious meanings, and to predict the way in which the discussion will affect the feelings and behaviour of all the group members. He needs to know when to intervene and, equally important, he has to be able to remain silent.
We know that we cannot carry on life in isolation from our fellows, and that it is on the quality of the relationships that we make with other people that so much of our happiness depends. This paper briefly reflects upon what happens in group situations. To study groups we need to turn from the consideration of the individual to a consideration of the group and then back to the individual again. The movement between the whole and its parts is important because both viewpoints only have meaning in relation to the other one. The psychological processes that take place within the person, and within the group of which the person forms a part, can never be understood in isolation.
"Awareness puts us into contact with the universe. lt mines every relationship, unmasks every event, every moment, for the meaning that is under the meaning of it. The question is not so much what is going on in the room, but what is happening to me because of it"
(Chittester 2000).
REFERENCES
Chittister, ). (2000). Illuminated Life. London: Orbis books.
Foulkes, S.H. ( 1986). Group analytical psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books.
Foulkes, S.H.(1 964) . Therapeutic Group Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Foulkes, S.H. (1990) 'The Group as Matrix of the Individual's Life' Chapter 22 in Selected Papers – Psychoanalysis andd Group Analysis.
London: Karnac Books.
Plato (1973). The last days of Socrates. London: Penguin group.
Thompson, S. & Kahn J.H. ( 1973) The group process as a helping technique. New York: Pergamon Press.