From face-to-face to online meetings. The experience of a training group

Presentation

For the last 10 years, we have been running the training programme “Conducting Groups and Teams” with a group-analytical orientation in Santander (Spain). It is a 3-year programme that corresponds to 3 academic years. Each year is contracted separately. Therefore, at the end of each year, participants can re-join or leave the programme. The organising institutes are Espacio de Grupo (Monica is its director) and Rivendel Grupos y Organizaciones (Luis is one of the directors).

The size of the group ranges from 8 to 15 participants. The sessions take place on Tuesdays and are held weekly. During each course, 10 cycles of 4 sessions are repeated with the same sequence: three experiential sessions of 90 minutes and a seminar of 120 minutes. The experiential sessions are directed by us from the co-therapy. The seminars are given by different teachers.

With the arrival of the pandemic and lockdown last year, we decided to transform the traditional face-to-face group into an online group.

The conductors

Co-therapy is a very effective management style, but it requires a high level of effort on the part of the conductors/facilitators to achieve a relationship based on respect and collaboration. In addition to meeting on Tuesdays before and after the sessions, we met once a week, on Wednesdays, for about an hour and a half (Ruiz and Palacios, 2019).

Especially during Wednesday’s meetings, we gradually devised an online structure for the group. It was not quick, nor was it easy. The usual ambivalence between desire and fear of change was present in both of us (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1996), although each of us tended to take one of the two positions.

Many of our conversations on Wednesday apparently had nothing to do with the group situation. But probably, in an unconscious way, they helped us to elaborate our emotions and integrate the ambivalence.

In the end we decided to apply a hybrid model, closer to the online model. The weekly experiential sessions and seminars would be online and two face-to-face sessions of 8 hours each on Saturdays would be added to the usual model. We also have training in psychodrama and it was planned to introduce active techniques in these sessions. The aim was to maintain a face-to-face space where emotional encounters and group cohesion would be facilitated.

The students

The last sessions of the 2019-20 course were online due to the lockdown. So the announcement that the next course would be mainly online did not come as a big surprise.

The number of students leaving the group at the end of the course remained within the usual numbers. On the other hand, the number of new enrolments increased considerably. This increase was due to the fact that the online format allowed students from other regions of Spain and outside Spain to participate.

The group in the face of change

At the start of the 2020-21 academic year, we found ourselves in front of a screen again.  With the awareness that this was not a temporary situation but a definitive one. The trainers and students shared a sense of being “just starting out”.

Where are those internal interpretations about who sits near or far from whom? Who is the speaker looking at? Is it invasive to enter the participants’ home through their computer? How are connection problems interpreted? How does one protect the group space from the appearance of a stranger on a participant’s screen?  And especially, what does it mean emotionally for the group to see each other through a screen? (See review of online groups in Weinberg, 2020).

At the beginning, all these changes tend to be experienced in a very threatening way. Interventions are often based on nostalgia and sadness associated with the loss of the previous model. Advantages are also recognised, such as the greater richness of the group by association of its “new” diversity or the savings in time and money due to not having to travel.

However, as time went by, we found that the basic aspects of group dynamics were maintained in this model and that it was possible to work in an effective and fruitful way.

It was curious to see how first-year students attributed almost every aspect of group dynamics, such as silences, to the online format. Sometimes the “veteran” students did not question these claims despite having experience from previous years, when similar criticisms were made in a face-to-face format. We interpreted this silence as an expression of the anger associated with the change of model.

In this climate, the face-to-face sessions aroused very high expectations. On the one hand, because they were face-to-face. On the other hand, because they included active techniques. To a certain extent, the fantasy was generated that the experiential sessions would solve all the group’s problems. At this point, the ineffectiveness of the conductors’ management style complemented by the difficulty for the rest of the group to actively intervene was a recurring theme. This position reminds the basic assumption of pairing described by Bion (2001).

The first face-to-face session could not be held due to mobility restrictions. Instead, a 4-hour online session with active techniques was held. The group appreciated the effort made to adapt to the situation  and keep the session interesting. However, the lack of personal contact left a bittersweet feeling.

Logically, this situation generated a climate of frustration in the group. Its elaboration brought us into contact with other frustrations that we are experiencing in our personal and professional lives. Many of them are associated with the pandemic we are suffering. Others are related to other conflicts in our history that have nothing to do with the pandemic.

The conflict experienced in the group facilitated the emergence of a subgroup that showed its anger and questioned the leadership style. Sometimes they showed their aggression towards the part of the group that spoke less frequently. At the same time, there were virtually no absences and minimal delays. This second factor is probably a reflection of the group’s hope for a constructive resolution of the conflict. Once again, a reflection of group ambivalence was observed. At different times, the schizoparanoid and depressive positions described by Melanie Klein (see review in: Segal, 1988) could be recognised in the group.

The need to set certain boundaries that would keep the group in a space of safety and respect brought the conductors into contact with a change in the distribution of power in the group. In the online model, we have less power than in the face-to-face model. We missed the influence that a gesture or our gaze could have at any given moment.

This situation led us to rethink some aspects of our way of conducting the group. On the one hand, we saw the desirability of the two leaders making more interventions in the same direction (previously we had allowed ourselves greater autonomy). On the other hand, we adopted a more interpretative and general style of interventions (previously we were able to make some more specific and targeted interventions to one member of the group).

The result of our change of attitude was very satisfactory. The group was resituated, the power struggle was softened and the climate of respect between group members was restored. We humbly understood that the credit for this reorganisation rested with the whole group. Surely, in a less emotionally mature group, the outcome would have been different.

Obviously, the richness of the dynamics of a group is so great that it cannot be covered in one article. We hope, however, that these few brushstrokes can be representative of the process of change that this group has undergone and is undergoing. We have the feeling that this process is proving to be difficult, but also that we are all learning a lot from it. Finally, formation is the main objective of the group.

From the past to the future

Sometimes the past helps to illuminate the future. This group already experienced a “revolution” 5 years ago when Monica joined the group as a co-therapist. Previously, Luis had been the only leader of the group. Her arrival was very disturbing.  The group was alarmed, twisted, but ended up recognising the richness that Monica brought and grew through this process. It is interesting to see how a group acquires a growing emotional maturity as its members renew themselves. We are confident that the resources and skills acquired by the group through its history will allow it to incorporate this change of model and grow with it.

We conductors are thinking about what to do next year with the face-to-face sessions. Try to keep them with the risk of eventually having to convert them online. Reduce them to one session in the summer to try to make sure they can be done. Simply eliminate them. Surely, through these considerations, we will continue to resolve our own ambivalences and, in some way, transmit our process of elaboration to the rest of the group.

The development of this group can be seen as an example of the relational dynamics associated with change processes. However, the actual situation is different from the example of the incorporation of a co-management model. The cause of change does not come from within the group, but it is found outside the group, in its social context.

Our society is undergoing a change that could be considered a revolution. COVID and other epidemics we may experience in the future is not only a health problem. The disease itself and preventive measures are transforming our society. It is possibly accelerating a process of change that was already underway associated, among other things, with the advance and expansion of new technologies. Particularly those related to communication (online world, robotics, social networks, mobile phones…).

In this new stage, it is possible to maintain a large number of relationships and to be in contact with our social environment practically instantaneously and permanently. On the other hand, relationships tend to lose a certain warmth, they are less emotional and more rational. Perhaps less committed and intimate.

Those of us of a certain age are once again feeling that nostalgia associated with the world that is going away. The future is uncertain. But we must prepare ourselves for the world that is coming, or is already here, and avoid being sequestered in the past. In this sense, the transformation of some experiential training groups into online groups can be seen as part of a natural process in the current social context.

References

Bion, W.R. (2001). “Experiences in Groups – and other papers”. Ed. Bruner-Routledge.

Laplanche, J. & Pontalis, J.B. (1996). “Diccionario de Psicoanálisis”. Ed. Paidós.

Ruiz, M. & Palacios, L. (2019). “La coterapia, el contigo en el grupo”. Norte de Salud Mental. Volumen XVI. 60:13-20.

Segal, H. (1988). “Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein”. Ed. Routledge.

Weinberg, H. (2020). “From the Circle to Screen”. GASi´s Webinar.

www. groupanalyticsociety.co.uk/webinar-conducting-group-online/

Mónica Ruiz
Psychologist, Specialist in Clinical Psychology. Psychotherapist, Group analyst, Psychodramatist.  Member of the Spanish Association of Neuropsychology (AEN). Vice-president of the Spanish Association of Psychodrama (AEP) 2015-2017. She practices psychotherapy in private practice and in collaboration with public and private institutions.
monica.rgd@cop.es

Luis Palacios
Psychiatrist- Psychotherapist. Group analyst and Psychodramatist. He has been President of the Spanish Association of Psychodrama and of the Spanish Society of Psychotherapy and Group Techniques. Member of GASi and IAGP. Collaborator of the Spanish National Distance University (UNED) and the Aragonese Institute of Social Services (IASS).
lpalacios@rivendelsl.com