The Group-As-A-Whole in the Interpretation

Abstract

Treating a therapy group as a whole neglects each member's individual experience and expectancies, especially when the group is considered from a psychological viewpoint. From a sociological-interactional perspective, however, the group can be seen as an entity, an interactional network. From this viewpoint we are interested in, for example, the quality and quantity of interactions in the members, the reciprocal feedbacks, etc. I speak of a `group dream', then, not because every member has had the same dream, but because a group participant's dream also reflects some or all other members' attitudes and behaviour patterns. Since a certain narcissistic-fusionary relationship is a preliminary stage to each object relation, some participants can speak to each other or the therapist to one member, and the others can profit from it. But it never goes so far that all group members would at any one moment have a unique group fantasy. On a higher level of relationship, transferences may occur in one or several individuals who may experience the group as a whole as a great caring mother But these transferences are different for each member and the therapist has to keep a bifocal attention on the individual members and the group situation.