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Chapter Twelve – Implications for Theory, Practice and Research – Page 332
clinical field, it has been argued that adherence to a consistent theoretical rationale
whatever that rationale can be a reliable part of ensuring positive outcomes. This pre-
disposes clinicians to focus on differences and to even these out. However, for
researchers, there is less need for immediate concern with a service outcome, and far
more a commitment to a climate of exploration. This opportunity for a broader range of
theoretical bases offers the potential to capture a very wide range of factors and
processes, all of which may well make future contributions to understanding.
Implications for practice
One possible grouping of these implications is threefold, into the implications of a
group-analytically informed of teaching, the practice of research into group work, and
the practice of research in general.
First, considering that one outcome of the research is a group-analytically informed
model of teaching, with the dual foci of the individual and the group, then it seems
inevitable that there is merit in considering whether existing programmes address this
notion. It seems likely that there may some implicit acknowledgement of these foci in
many programmes, but these could well benefit from making this acknowledgement
explicit and attending to the group strand.
Second, in relation to the practice of group-analytic psychotherapy and group-
analytically informed group work, it is useful to wonder whether the methodology of the
research may help in the consideration of this practice, for example by extending the
understanding-in-context of aspects of group interaction, through notions such as sticky
moments, bi-logical depth, and an exploration behind the scenes and below the surface.