Group Analytic Training and the Social Context: Who is influencing Whom?

Abstract

This article inquires into the group analyst’s capacity to influence the social sphere. To this end, I begin by introducing the principles of ‘managerialism’, or ‘New Public Management’, as this is the norm that currently prevails in the social sphere. This is followed by a critical excursion into the values of classical psychoanalysis, which I argue continues to prevail within group analysis. Next, I critically reflect on contemporary group analytic trainings in the light of these two ways of thinking, managerialism and the analytic orthodoxy. I conclude that there is a real danger that group analytic trainings concede to and imbibe bureaucratic managerialist norms, producing group analysts who are more likely to be deferential to established authorities rather than being able to question and challenge them.