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Chapter Two Part Two – Methodology - Page 80
position of what Pines calls a ‘double agent’, both member and recipient of the group
processes but also a supporter and vital link in the group structure. Group members are
gradually able to work at higher levels of psychic organisation, maturing over time as
the group develops. This double process plays an increasing part in holding the group
together and yet at the same time allows members to experience deeper, more
regressive, more loosely organised aspects of self through their own inner explorations
and through participation in the psychic lives of the other group members.
Conclusion to consideration of the theoretical and
philosophical framework
This is a description of philosophical underpinnings which owes almost all to writing
about therapy. However, to borrow an argument from Devereux (1967), with
facilitation, what emerges from this range of assumptions about people, behaviour and
experience can now readily be applied to the theorisation of a form of teaching, and to
the carrying out of research into groups and their workings. The turn of a post-
Foulkesian gaze towards teaching and learning is one of the original contributions of
this study. The way in which this gaze is applied is detailed further in Chapter Three,
‘Research Methods and Their Use’, and Appendix Two includes a series of varying
examples of the methodology and methods in action. However, in order to bring this
consideration of literature and methodology to a close, I include below a consideration
of the theoretical and philosophical framing of the study, through which the meta-level
concepts considered in this chapter can be applied to the data to be considered in
Chapters Four to Nine.