On Making A Home Amongst Strangers: The Paradox of Group Psychotherapy

Abstract

This lecture explores how the ambient network amongst group analysts has grown from Foulkes’ own biography through figurations of home in group psychotherapy where members’ attunement and alignment transpose longing into belonging. The three underlying dimensions of group analytic psychotherapy—the relational, reflective and reparative—are described and illustrated with clinical vignettes and music. These dimensions are found working in the current, transference, projective and primordial domains of small therapeutic groups and in the large group dynamics of the lecture’s audience.