Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 80, June 2018

Newsletter – Summer 2018 57
a direct impact on the way the group acted on this Tuesday, even
before the group session started. Nearly every group member entering
the room asked me to have an individual session if possible. I thought:
What is going on here? And during the session the theme was whether
there would be enough time and space for all. One group member was
very angry. She attacked another group member, who stayed very
calm indeed and rejected the accusations, that actually, I think, were
intended for me. Entering the room, every group member was a bit
upset about this session because seven group members wanted to talk
about the way they had got along during the break and they wanted to
introduce themselves to the new group member. The angry group
member expressed the rage of all the group members. For the new
group member, what was happening was very strange and she left the
first group session upset. I think the “temperature” was a bit too ‘hot’
for her first participation. Her family situation: Her mother died when
she was about eleven years old after long years of suffering (cancer).
Her father never spoke to her or her younger sister about their
mother’s death, but quickly married again, to a widow with three
daughters. The stepmother was similar to those in fairy tales and her
father didn’t protect her.
Condensation of the group process and increase in the possibilities
of working through the transference
Group therapy expands not only the number of available objects but
also of opportunities for transference. The group forces each member
to recognize the uniqueness of their own way of seeing and
interpreting the world, his relations, all issues. In concurrent or
combined therapy, the possibility to have shared experience because
therapist and patient are in the same group is a real treasure. It is really
interesting to talk about events that happened in the group.
Every member becomes aware of the fact that their own view
of the world is massively influenced by their own biography. I call it
“biographically coloured glasses”. A repetitive theme in all groups is:
“Will I get enough space and attention…?” In a family, every member
wants to get a piece of the cake.
I want to quote the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get
what you want, but if you try some time, you find, you get what you
need.” The early wishes can neither be fulfilled by the psychoanalyst
nor by the group. This is a weighty insight and grief is necessary to
get over it. Then, patients learn to share time and space and the group
leader. When the group process develops well they recognize that they
do not need as much as they thought they would need in the beginning