Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 78, December 2017

42 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
Small Group as ‘Envelope of Suffering’:
Lasting Impact of Traumatic Border Crossings
By Wendy Schaffer, PhD
Abstract
In this paper, my central focus is on certain patients who have
experienced traumatic border crossings and are left indelibly
imprinted with intense and lasting pain that threatens the psyche’s
integration with the body, affecting capacity to desire and disturbs
thinking. Anzieu’s research informs that in extreme cases, inflicting a
real envelope of suffering on oneself may be a desperate attempt to
restore the skin’s containing function not performed by the mother or
those in one’s early environment. It was of some concern to me
whether the group could offer protection and shielding so that the
patient could bear the pain and maintain hope in the possibility of
recovery. I shall provide illustrations from clinical group sessions at a
time of reform in a hospital outpatient clinic in the face of a new
opportunistic model of complex needs care.
I shall present some of my clinical efforts to understand
clinical experience characterised by patients whose shared trauma and
attempts for containment appeared to influence the way certain
treating staff in the wider work group contributed to my battles and
the patient’s predicaments as they tried to manage their suffering.
Key words: clinical group analysis, pain, skin, trauma.
Introduction
A while ago in a suburb of greater Melbourne, a refugee mother
pleaded guilty to killing 3 of her children all aged under 5 years and
the attempted murder of a fourth, a girl aged 5. The tragedy was widely
publicized in the local news. The mother had migrated to Australia
from South Sudan with three of her eldest children to escape war after
her first husband died. She had been having a long affair with a
relative of her husband, father of the children involved. A judge
sentenced her to 26 years and six mont
hs in jail, with a non-parole period of 20 years. The father of
her children described her as a caring and loving mother (ABC news
updated, 2017-02-03).
Trauma in an attachment relationship is the most destructive
experience for the child. The difficulties for the child to think that the