THE GROUP AS THE THERAPIST
Werner Knauss
Email: wknauss@t-online.de
Paper given to the American Group Psychotherapy Association,
Boston, 
February, 2001

Group analysis is the analysis of the group by the group
In a group, everyone and no-one is a therapist. In a group, analytic understanding the group is the therapist, which means that group analysis is a form of psychotherapy "by the group, of the group , including it's conductor" (S.H. Foulkes). The primary psychological unit is the group, the primary biological unit is the individual. The process of existing is a process of communication in different, significant groups. Radically said: without communication we can't exist. In a group analytic understanding, the individual is seen as a nodal point in a network of group relations. Psychopathology of the individual expresses a blockage in the communication within significant groups. Only through analysis of the conflictual group relations, this disturbance in the communication process, called psychopathology, can be understood. In a process of free-floating communication, analyzing is the task of the group, thus interpretation is not the privilege of the analyist. Through analyzing, the group creates meaning. Under the specific conditions of a group analytic setting which follows well-defined rules, the group analytic attitude – slowly adopted by all group members – promotes the development of an intermediate space with clear boundaries, in which the group members – including the conductor – develop the ability to communicate and listen to each other in a non-judgemental, free-floating, non-directive and non-manipulative way. In this free-floating communication which provides a maximum of free speech, the unconscious relationship in the network of the group becomes the object of communication and analysis. Conflicts which develop in this dynamic network of group relations can then be understood as figures on the background of the unconscious transference and counter-transference processes. Transference and counter-transference form the link to the outside world. Each patient brings his or her world into the group. Communication becomes the aim in such a free-floating process: "In learning to communicate, the group can be compared with a child learning to speak." (S.H. Foulkes & E.J. Anthony, 1968:263)

How do we foster the free-floating communication by the group analytic attitude?
A group analytic attitude is not a moral aim, but describes the technique which opens a space for the group members to reach access to the unconscious process within the group and between groups. Group analysts are not able to deal better with day-to-day conflicts, but they have learned a very specific way of relating within a well-defined group analytic situation which opens the way to the understanding of unconscious conflicts, the social unconscious of the group. Identity is a process which develops through interaction in which the reciprocity of recognition becomes the basic exchange in communication. Individuality develops through the deviation from expectations and norms of these significant communicating groups. With this group analytic attitude the group conductor deviates from the regressive need of the group for a leader. In this case of a hierarchical perception of the group dynamic in which dependency and power are created, a sight for mutual recognition starts with the danger that this ideal free-floating communication can deteriorate in two different ways: on the one hand, autonomy can become arbitrariness, a regression into a mass with an idealized leader, on the other hand individuality can become isolation. For being able to use such dangers as creative forces we need to work through dependency needs, destructive hate and splitting as a defence against a group analytic free-floating process. "The group ... shows a need ... for a leader in the image of an omnipotent, godlike father figure..." (S.H. Foulkes, 1964:63) The main task of a group analytic conductor is in this context "to wean the group from this need for authoritative guidance..." (S.H. Foulkes, 1964:61) The conductor has to become "free from (the) temptation to play this godlike role, to exploid it for his own needs... (S.H. Foulkes, 1964:60) This is the basic group analytic attitude.

When S.H. Foulkes gave a talk in New York 1949, he addressed the group analytic understanding of conducting a group. The term 'leader' is not only unsuitable because the word 'leader' had been deeply compromised by Hitler's and Musselini's dictatorships, but mainly due to the group analytic understanding of conducting a group. "In thus refraining from leading, he shows up, 'by default', as it were, what the group wants and expects from a leader" (S.H. Foulkes). The group analyst has to accept the unconscious fantasy of the group which puts the therapist in the position of a premordial leader image, one who is omnipotent, and the group expects magical help from him. But instead of fulfilling this regressive need, the conductor uses it in the best interest of the group, which means that he has to change from a leader of the group to a leader in the group, replacing thereby in turn the leader's authority by that of the group (S.H. Foulkes, 1984:61). Accordingly, Foulkes came to define the essential role of group analysis "to replace submission by co-operation on equal terms between equals" (S.H. Foulkes, 1984:65). By working through this regressive need of a fusion with an omnipotent leader, the group develops the ability to communicate between equals.


Why is such a group process therapeutic?
In this basic law of group dynamics, S.H. Foulkes defined the healing effect of groups as follows: "The deepest reason why patients... can reinforce each other's normal reactions and wear down and correct each others's neurotic reactions, is that collectively they constitute the very norm from which, individually, they deviate." (S.H. Foulkes, 1948:29)
Groups are brought together by the need to belong. In order to make this cohesion very strong, which means to define "Us" from "Not-Us", all differences within the group have to be denied at first. Another possibility is the fusion with an omnipotent leader and his or her ideology. Individuality is denied. To belong to a significant group and to be recognized by the group is a therapeutic force in itself, but it becomes very soon a resistance and a dangerous dynamic within and between groups. This is why in group analytic groups the conductor is through this group analytic attitude the stranger from the beginning. The frustration of dependency needs provokes very powerful emotional recations. The need to belong to a unified group, makes differences within the group unconscious, the so-called social unconscious of the group. Through the process of a free-floating association within the group, mainly established by the group analytic attitude of the conductor and the basic rule, that every spontaneous thought should be shared, an exchange between different views and experiences can start. This differentiation process goes along with a very painful and slow process of accepting the otherness of the other. It also goes along with destructive fantasies which, according to Winnicott, create the differentiation between the self and the other. Listening can in this context be understood as a process through which we "let a stranger into our home", to use Farhad Dalal's words. (F. Dalal, 1999) The central defence against listening is a fear of the stranger, of a different view of the world. Only if we let the stranger, the different view of the world in, listen to it, a therapeutic process can take place. "The fight into individuality is a defence mechanism that seeks to build fortification against the therapeutic process which, if allowed to enter, will inevitably transform." (F. Dalal, 1998:223) According to F. Dalal (1998), "a functioning group could be seen as a communication process in which competing discourses come into conflict, with the aim to free each group member from being stuck in ones down discourse, ones own experience of the self and the world, and opens up the possibility of connecting with other discourses, other ways of being and experiencing to which one did not have previous access to." (F. Dalal, 1998:177)

Mirroring
In a free-floating communication, the group members learn to tolerate the ambiguity of communication, which means to understand that each group member tells more than what he or she says. This is one of the preconditions for being able to use other group members as mirrors. Like mirrors allow us to see ourselves from behind, the understand of the mirrored meaning of what a group member has said, allows the access to the unconscious meaning of what has been told.
For the process of differentiation, the groups make use of mirroring. Mirroring combines empathy in the other and the notion of being different from the other in one emotional reaction to the perception of the otherness of the other. Through mirroring, similarities and differences between group members are sorted out. I would like to give an example for such a mirroring process: A group member describes now for a long time and in each group session again and again his obsessive rituals. A newcomer in the group reacts to that by saying: "Stop talking like that or leave the group. I can't stand it any longer." The attacked group member replies: "If you talk to me in such a rude way, you should immediately leave the group." Due to the rule that everything can be said in the group, both positions have a place. This is the only thing which I mentioned in this situation. The group could use this mirror reaction, the aggression towards a manipulative way to control the communication process, for analyzing the way how this member tries to disrupt the communication by this ritual, by his symptoms. The newcomer confronted the compulsive speaker with the fact that others have a place and a space too within this communication process. The mirrored, destructive fantasy to exclude somebody who tries to control the group gave way to a process of differentiation within the group: both views have a place.

Why do destructive fantasies play such an important role in this differentiation process?
I would like to start with a clinical example:
One patient disclosed after 20 sessions in a slow-open group that he beats up his wife whenever she says something unpleasant or different from his own view. He got mirror reactions by another patient, a priest, who disclosed that he is sometimes full of destructive, killing fantasies in which women are slaughtered along a swimming pool. The group could work with this destructive fantasies and understood the killing fantasy and the beating up as resistance to a painful process of separation by accepting the otherness of the other. Both group members and the group were able to understand that destructive fantasies and impulses express on the one hand the need for unification and support on the other hand the need for differentiation and separation. According to Winnicott, the infant creates by attacking the mother – if the mother does not retaliate, survives psychologically – the differentiation between fantasy and reality, between object and subject, and an intermediate space in which transitional objects can be used for development. Winnicott never believed in a death instinct. For Winnicott, destructiveness is not the death instinct in operation, but a creative force for ego development. The task of the group in such a situation of slow differentiation, of slowly accepting the otherness of the other, is to stick to the group analytic attitude within the group. In Winnicott's words: "Destructive activity is a patient's attempt to place the analyst outside the area of omnipotent control, that is, out in the world." (D.W. Winnicott, 1971:105) Both, Winnicott and Foulkes, describe analytic psychotherapy as a process from a lack of communication to an open communication, from monologue to dialogue. Both maintain a containing, receptive analytical attitude. If destructiveness occurs, it has to be contained and no retaliation be sought. The setting, the careful selection, and the composition of the group protects conductor and patient from real destruction by creating a safe place for the communication of destructive fantasies. This means ego creation and not only ego training in action. Clear boundaries for the conductor and the group and holding them firmly are of crucial importance. There is a lot of trust in the patient's and the group's developmental forces. Destructive fantasies can be understood if the group analytic attitude survives as an attempt to eradicate feelings of dependance and to deny the otherness of the other. In a group analytic process, in which regression in a trusting and facilitating environment can emerge, these repressed and encapsulated destructive fantasies (cf. E. Hopper, 1991) can become conscious and verbalised, and thus used for further creative development of differentiation and individuation.


The "anti-group"
Morris Nitsun (1996) describes destructive group forces in his book "The anti-group". The term "anti", similar to the term negative, implies a movement against something contrary to the term "pro" or "positive". But if we understand destructive attacks as a creative attempt itself, there is nothing negative in destructive fantasies. Real destruction is only acted out if the destructive fantasy can't be verbalised and if the environmental object seeks for retaliation and not the other way around. This means that in group analytic psychotherapy we have to find ways to protect the group analytic attitude, which helps the group and the acting out member to understand the creative potential of what is being staged. There is not polarity: anti- and pro-group forces, but there is one developmental process in which the survival of destructive attacks and the working through of destructive fantasies sets in motion a process of differentiation between self and object. It is not a matter of transforming a destructive attack into something creative, but to understand the creative potential of destructive fantasies, which is to transform the object still under omnipotent control into the perception of an external subject in its own rights. If we are able to survive destructive attacks and to put into words our own destructive fantasies, we create a mature inter-subjective space in which all group members are perceived as externals and thus as subjects with their own rights and needs. A transitional space for creativity and love develops between group members. In this sense, destruction comes before desire.

The social unconscious
While the libido brings and holds together the group, destructive fantasies create a differentiation process within the group and thus make the social unconscious conscious. The social unconscious of the group can be understood as a harbour of all denied heterogenity within the group. This process of differentiation within a group through which the social unconscious, the denied heterogenity within the group, becomes conscious, gives sight on the power relations within and between groups. Such an analysis of the group by the group sets in motion a developmental process from two poles: firstly from a fusion of a mass and an omnipotent leader to a network of equal group members, and secondly from an isolated individual to an attached and connected social subject, who develops in an on-going exchange between group members. This can also be seen as a process in the direction of democratisation. The task of the conductor is to establish a group analytic situation in which a free-floating communication comes to life. He has to combine the group according to a maximum of heterogenity, different views of the world and according to a similar ego strength. The basic rule that everything can be said and be understood as a valuable communication, opens the space for a healthier development of each group member by mutual recognition of being different.

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