I wonder how you have coped with the forced isolation imposed on all of us during the corona virus. Has the weekly hand clapping made you feel more part of your local community providing some small contact with others during the week? Or have you been part of a family meeting on Zoom or with…
Silences are an inevitable and potentially helpful part of the therapeutic process. However, a number of people I see as a therapist express a feeling that they are not getting something right when a silence arises in our work together. The psychotherapy world (in particular the psychoanalytic and group analytic fields) has also had some…
“Each individual – itself an artificial though plausible abstraction – is basically and centrally determined, inevitably, by the world in which he lives, by the community, the group, of which he forms a part.” Foulkes, S.H. (1948, p 10, Introduction to Group Analytic Psychotherapy, Karnac) The above quote is from Sigmund Foulkes who was the…
Berlin was the setting for a symposium organised by the International Group Analytic Society (IGAS.) Over 600 people from 40 plus countries attended. This was my first time in Berlin, a place I had wanted to visit for a long time. When I saw the symposium was going to be based there, it made the…
It is notable that people seeking therapy who would most stand to benefit from joining a therapy group are often the least keen to do so. For some people, difficulties with being part of a group are not the main reason they’re seeking therapy. However, the thought of being in a therapy group may be…
What is shame? Shame is hard to talk about, as we tend to manage it through secrecy. We hide what we are most ashamed of about ourselves. Unfortunately, shame is bound up with our bodies and so moments of feeling ashamed can often be accompanied by physiological responses which feel exposing and so exacerbate our shame…
“The person is comprehensible only within this tapestry of relationships, past and present” (Mitchell, 1988). Despite the great therapeutic benefits of psychotherapy groups, unfortunately they are sparsely offered within the therapeutic community. This may have something to do with the current focus on individual therapy, lack of will (or skill) of therapists in leading groups,…