The search for a container in a precarious environment

Abstract

This article explores the impact of the parallel process of a precarious environment on a multicultural therapy group for women survivors of torture and persecution who had sought asylum in Ireland. The environments for both therapists and group members were experienced as producing ‘unthinkable anxiety’ (Winnicott, 1962: 57). For the therapists, their context was of threatened dismissal due to organizational restructuring, and for the group members it was the threat of deportation. The impact shaped decisions pertaining to the dynamic administration of how the group should be conducted and for how long. It led to a clinical crisis when the anxiety in the group became enmeshed, provoking primitive defences which affected the capacity to think, and blocked understanding on the part of the therapists.

Flexibility in the level of leadership activity allowed for a containing process to take place and the group to become the therapist (Sclapobersky, 2016: 210). This flexible approach enabled the naming of an anxiety for the group as a whole which bound together the fragmented, intense emotions, and opened up the reflective space to the contents the members wished to have contained (Hinshelwood, 1994: 102). All names have been changed and the group gave consent for the authors to write about this experience.