Psychosocial Compromise Formation: Understanding Defence and Coping in Group Analysis

Abstract

Psychosocial compromise formation is discussed in relation to defence and coping in group analysis. This concept is based on the fundamental assumption of psychoanalysis that in early development of the individual unbearable conflictual needs and desires of instinctive or narcissistic origin are withdrawn from conscious experience by suppression or other kinds of defence. The structure of the ego, also a result of the individual's experience organization, mediates between the conflictual components of the ego and superego.

Since object-relations belong phylogenetically to the species humana and ontogenetically to the interests of the ego, individual compromises have to be adapted into social systems, such as the therapeutic group, so that relationships can develop and be maintained and regulated. The results of such efforts of reciprocal adaptation are psychosocial compromises, which, as relatively time-stable configurations of dealing with each other in groups, serve among other things to keep the group sufficiently coherent and are in the interest of members seeking healing change.