Someone once said to me that psychoanalysis and group therapy are “apples and oranges.” I thought about that and then thought, “I think it’s more like apples and apple pie.” First you have to grow the apples in an individual analysis, but at a certain point, you are ready to go into group to learn how to make something delicious with them.
To use a different metaphor:
To use a different metaphor:
| The relationship between a patient and his psychoanalyst is a lot like the relationship between a mother and her newborn infant. Like the mother, the analyst holds the patient in a way that doesn’t judge or condemn, focusing all her energy on understanding and accepting her patient to encourage his growth. Individual psychoanalysis replicates and reworks problems that were created in the first few years of life, and when people are working on these very early issues, individual therapy is the best treatment. But if all goes well in individual analysis, and the patient has made the developmental journey from birth to the first day of school, the patient is now ready for a group. Does the idea of group therapy make you anxious, or even unsettle you to the point of being scared? If so, you are probably reliving the feelings you had on the day you started preschool! |
Most of the patients who come to me for an individual analysis are not ready to be in a group; they are just too young, emotionally speaking, and they need to spend time in a dyad before they are ready to play. Unless you are a person who has a very strong ego and is coming to therapy to tweak a few personal problems, I think it is a mistake to go to group first.
But a person who has done an individual analysis but never been in a group is incomplete. Psychoanalysis gives people tremendous insight about themselves, but to really change and be attracted to people who are nurturing rather than pathological, a person needs to practice with real people in a group.
Psychoanalytic patients have explored and understood their obsessive repetitions, but now they need practice in trying something new. Group is the perfect place to practice all sorts of new relationships. Group is a lab for life.
In a good group, rather than monologuing about sad childhoods and unhappy love affairs, members are encouraged to work in the here and now with others in the room.
(Image via Joris Louwes on flickr.)
For example:
But a person who has done an individual analysis but never been in a group is incomplete. Psychoanalysis gives people tremendous insight about themselves, but to really change and be attracted to people who are nurturing rather than pathological, a person needs to practice with real people in a group.
Psychoanalytic patients have explored and understood their obsessive repetitions, but now they need practice in trying something new. Group is the perfect place to practice all sorts of new relationships. Group is a lab for life.
In a good group, rather than monologuing about sad childhoods and unhappy love affairs, members are encouraged to work in the here and now with others in the room.
(Image via Joris Louwes on flickr.)
For example:
| The group leader may ask a patient who had a miserable marriage, “Does anyone here in this room remind you of your sadistic husband?” The leader encourages talking to people in the moment in a way that resolves conflict and moves relationships toward health. In group, our unhappy divorcee may fall in love with a sadistic, seductive man who is a lot like her husband, but this time she has others watching and commenting and expanding her awareness about what is going on. Hopefully, she will also have an opportunity to meet new kinds of men—the type who usually bore her in the outside world, but whose goodness, kindness, empathy, and integrity slowly grow on her till they begin to seem more exciting than the more familiar ones who always attracted her. |
Group helps people become interested in other people’s feelings, and develop the skills to be genuinely empathic and intuitive. As that begins to happen, the world goes from black and white to technicolor.
Everyone comes to group therapy wanting to be loved, but they soon discover that the real joy is learning to love other people. New skills learned in group become available a few months later outside the group room in real life; those who are successful in group soon become successful in life.
All patients, sooner or later, need to be in a group if they want to achieve their full potential.
Everyone comes to group therapy wanting to be loved, but they soon discover that the real joy is learning to love other people. New skills learned in group become available a few months later outside the group room in real life; those who are successful in group soon become successful in life.
All patients, sooner or later, need to be in a group if they want to achieve their full potential.
For more of Dr. Holmes's insights into using psychoanalysis to improve your life, read her new book, Wrestling with Destiny.
RSS Feed
