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Chapter Ten – Summary and Conclusions – Page 300
From the alternative perspective of the analysis of the episode reported in Chapter Nine,
I can echo the accounts given by the students, which have considerable authenticity, and
do reflect directly the achievement of some of the aims of the semester and the course.
However, the example shows more than this in considering how has the group in the
example given been shown to be helpful (and not), to the learning of psychotherapy, and
specifically, applying theory to practice? As with previous examples, some of this was
helpful and can be shown, whilst much of what the example illuminates is missed
opportunities, only visible as possibility.
The group and the staff provide an environmental mother, in the sense of being a
supportive and developmental environment, although to what extent this is ‘good-
enough’ has been debated. The group exhibits scapegoating. The group has enabled the
emergence and expression of less conscious impulses and dynamics, although what is
missing (and therefore not helpful, and its potential helpfulness not seen) is collective
thought and reflection on these dynamics. The group provides a site for identity in
transition, but because the potential contribution of the group aspect of the teaching is
not made fully explicit by the staff, students are not fully enabled to focus on and
appreciate this.
The group effectively disappears, from the attention of the staff and students, and from
direct consideration by them as a group. What is shown by this is that managing the
group perspective on events needs conscious attention, even if the outcome of that
attention is the choice to have the perspective disappear for a time. I believe that this
example has shown that if endings such as this are not well considered ahead of time,
they risk becoming sites for the enactment of primitive and ambivalent thoughts and
feelings. Conversely, if the group is engaged from the perspective of itself as a group,