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Chapter Six – Part of a Session – Page 202
One way of viewing the dynamic between the group as a learning group and the group
as a therapy group is that this represents an expression of an underlying and possibly
unconscious conflict, manifested on a group level but with inevitable individual
determinants. There is a range of possibilities that might be expressed, but an obvious
one is between the rational task of learning a craft and the chance to express the
emotional pain involved in this task, and in so doing, to regress in a safe emotional
environment. In this sense, the episode can be viewed in classic Freudian terms as a
form of symptom, expressive of aspects of underlying conflict and phantasy (Freud,
1900/1953).
INTERPRETATION - THEMES APPARENT IN THE SESSION
The above is a weaving of the events of the session from a group perspective. It is also
interesting to look at other themes that capture the events of the session, or at least some
aspect of them. These include, first, that this session becomes something of a mid-
course correction. On reflection, if I have not reviewed a course with the participants by
the half-way mark, then I would feel negligent. The tutors had not made a plan to
review the progress of the semester, 4 so in a sense this session represents the students
taking the important step of challenging the framework and what may have become an
anxious adaptation by the group to the task.
Second, in terms of the lifespan of the group, this session maybe represents adolescence,
with all of the ambivalence, the search for identity, and the simultaneous and apparently
contradictory need for independence and dependence that characterises that life-stage.
4 This can be seen as one of the problems of co-teaching, particularly when either there is no clear
hierarchy or there is complex hierarchy (as in this case) between the colleagues involved, there may be a
paralyzing impact on the spontaneous taking of responsibility.