Article: Between Generations: On Becoming a Group Analyst, Experiences in Group Analytic Training

I would like to thank the organizing Committee for giving me this opportunity to talk to you about some aspects of group analytic training, based on our experiences at IGA Ljubljana. I am not only thankful to give this talk here today, but for the whole experience of discussing the training experience with my colleagues and not only hearing their personal view of the training, but at the same time making sense of my own feelings connected to the training experience as well. Colleagues, students in various stages of training and one who just earned her diploma last year, were involved in preparation of this talk. Nine colleagues agreed to participate. Four of them I interviewed individually and five participated in a focus group discussion sharing their experiences in training that I am going to present. I am especially pleased that I was able to organize a focus group discussion as the feelings expressed were shared, resonated among us and it gave us all another perspective in the experience of group analytic training.

The questions asked were simple and structured to give both rational and emotional insight into training, both conscious and unconscious phantasies, feelings and motivations of the training process. Dubravka and I composed the questions around general feeling of the training experience, different contexts of educational process (personal therapy, supervision, theoretical seminars etc.), feedback and growth, expectations, participation, personal and professional development, work, future and, last but not least, the various aspects of relationships between trainers and trainees in the educational process. The aim was to better understand where in the training process there is this valuable and important space “in-between” generations[1] of trainers and trainees for transmitting and co-creating group-analytic skills and knowledge. Is there enough of this space? In what way is this space created in the training process? How it is used? Do we, trainees, understand and use this space? After finishing the interviews and conducting focus group discussion it seemed, at least for few moments clearer, how this space “in-between” is created, how we use it and where it is. Then this vision gets blurred again with the training process itself.

This space opens in moments of numerous, countless encounters and interactions. Sometimes we, the trainees, are for various reasons unable to use this space, other times the trainers are unable to create good and safe enough environment. “Good-enough mothering”[2] is the basis that creates this space. Difficult transference – countertransference relationships, sibling rivalry, negative mirroring aspects can make this space very narrow. “Sometimes one learns what group analysis is not and that is fine too.” What surprised me the most, thought, is that even thought there was a common consensus that the training experience is deeply emotional and very personal, sometimes really heavy and difficult, that at some moments it feels almost masochistic, little of these heavy emotions are communicated during training. Not just what one would expect between “parents” and “children” but between “siblings” as well and sometimes one can remain with these feelings very alone. There is constant struggle where to discuss what. “There is constant internal conflict of having the objective to become an analyst and the feeling that you are not one yet,” as one colleague puts it. “Sometimes you need to play the part.” What happens in supervision, in therapy, in peer group? Constant internal battle where to get the comfort of unconditional love.

I came to group-analytic training from a very different profession. I was trained as an architect. Architecture seems like a far leap from psychotherapy, but Heidegger puts architecture not only as the act of building but nurturing, enabling the world to be as it is.[3] That brings it closer to psychotherapy and even group-analytic training that is enabling people to become who they are, as Jane Campbell puts it.[4] There are also telling similarities in training process of becoming an architect and a group-analyst. That familiarity gave me some sense of knowing. Both consist of parallel processes; theoretical seminars, practical work under supervision, and learning in a peer group of students that are at different stages of training. I remember when applying for group analytic training, I had an entry interview with Lev. I said to him that discussing in a group is where you learn, not when you read theory or do practical work. It is the dialogue space where learning happens. It was a very idealistic point of view, but some kind of idealization is necessary to join any process. We expect it from our patients and we must admit that we idealized the group, group processes, framework of the training, trainers… one or the other aspect of the training. What brought my colleagues into the training? “Some felt recruited by older colleagues just to fill the supervision group” the other “liked the structured process” or “wanted to go deeper.” Within the group-analytic training students must additionally complete at least four years of personal therapy in an analytic group. One has to become a patient for at least 1,5 hours a week. This might put many prospective students, professionals in their own right, in conflict with the wish to become a trainee. It is a very big step to take as one colleague explained: “There was a full room of us at the group analytic training presentation, but when they heard that you need to go to a therapy group with patients only two of us remained.” Personal therapy seems the hardest and least discussed segment of the training, but equally important. I was surprised that colleagues I interviewed scarcely spoke about their own therapy, which seems to be in contrast with trainers who talk a lot about it on various occasions, formal and informal, and it seems to be most fundamental and acknowledged element of the group analytical training. Why is the younger generation reluctant to appreciate and embrace it? Most of the colleagues I talked to are still in therapy, some just finished, some are joining again. Maybe one needs some distance to fully appreciate what Foulkes stated as the first and foremost need of training process.[5]

This is the skeleton of the training process and from a distance the training seems well structured. There are certain fulfillments that need to be met at every stage of the process and there is sense of continuity. This creates an atmosphere of safety and stability. But the reality of entering the process soon becomes very different. There are not many hours one spends in training, but the feeling is quite contrary. While spending 3-10 hours of your week studying (a fragment of 168 hours in a week) might not seem much, it might get overwhelming. As a colleague summarized her feelings: “At certain point you think of life as something beside the group analytic training; no matter the family, job, kids…” or another: “at certain point there is a feeling that everything in your life revolves around the training.” It gets difficult, anxiety from overall training, as well as the trainee’s personal life permeate the clinical work, where the student conducts his or her group and vice-versa. It is a constant minefield, it seems. Everywhere. It sometimes gets difficult to contain this anxiety. “It seems that training is also to train us to withstand all this anxiety. There is a lot of anxiety in (clinical) work we do, maybe that is why we are pressured to the limits?” That is how we, the trainees, try to make sense of this anxiety. Another colleague puts it: “If it is hard, it must be good.” It is for sure an emotional process, some colleagues verbalized or showed a lot of emotions when talking about the educational process, even cried, other expressed things that were really heavy and difficult for them and rarely expressed before. It seems that some feelings remain unspoken. When the boundaries get blurred, when one is finishing the process and becoming a colleague with former trainers, it seems that it becomes even more difficult to express some emotions encapsulated in the training process. Another matter that preoccupies trainees is permeable, porous, even “leaky” boundaries. There are a lot of different situations where boundaries get overstepped in dual relationships. “One sits with supervisor in a median group.” “My therapist was also in the educational board.” “Non-related clinical work gets involved in feedback.” Trainees are also unaware which work gets included into assessments that lets you progress to the final finish line – the clinical thesis you have to submit to become the analyst. “Does something you say in median group get you in trouble?” “Is there any point where you can rest and let you be you?” Foulkes made it clear that the group analysis is not about teaching ‘good’ behavior and inducing conformity to external social norms.[6] Is there the same feeling within training? Sometimes it feels that this fundament is forgotten. One might feel pressured to behave in certain way “that is becoming to an analyst,” which is contrary to what is the essence of group analysis. When the trainee’s personality and not work becomes the focus of supervisions one might feel pressured. Above mentioned “sibling rivalry” doesn’t help. “Some “siblings” might turn against another, becoming the ally to the “bad parent”.” When I am writing these lines, I hear colleagues speaking about it, I remember being in the similar situations and the feelings and emotions get real. Feedback is another anxiety provoking subject as it is usually vague and one colleague remarked: “Maybe it would be better that there is no feedback at all.” “One feels anxiety when criticized, as well as when complimented.” Supervisions leave you “wandering”, “hanging.” In the course of education one has the opportunity to work with several supervisors and their personal styles of supervision. “Sometimes there is just the wrong supervisor at the wrong time.” The trainees agree that supervision is utmost helpful in becoming the group analyst. What about it really helps them, however, seems to remain out of reach, hidden. “Maybe it is the stability, that there will be someone that will want to listen and want to help you understand what is going on.” Does the training offer a “good enough” holding environment that all these feelings and emotions can be resolved and contribute to the personal growth of the future analyst? Who or what will be that “good enough mother?” The consensus in all of the interviewees is, that peer group is an important anchor that gives you stability and strength to carry on. Sometimes when one gets negative feedback and is asking themselves “am I in the wrong profession”, there is the peer group that shares that same feelings. At another time it is just one of the colleagues, but he or she gives you enough strength to continue. Sometimes supervisor or therapy group gives you that strength and holding as well. That affirms that learning is not only intellectual processes, it is emotional experiences embedded within a relationship context.[7] These real relationships we develop within the training become a part of who we become. Slowly we emerge and become who we are. Slowly we bring our personalities out in groups we conduct, we are “trying to become authentic even if we are sometimes not analytical, but it works. It works in groups we conduct, it works in our supervisions and therapeutic groups.” If at first when you enter the process sometimes there is this feeling that “theoretical knowledge will be your savior” and the idea is that you “think theoretical concepts within training contexts”, but then slowly you realize the real importance is “not in what to think, but how to think.” “You need not know all the time what is going on.” You realize that the same stability that gives you strength during education is the same stability patients need in a analytic group.

So what really is the experience of group analytic training? Is it learning how to “dance”, when one is learning their first simple steps and at the end performs complex, improvised, and authentic dance moves? Is it learning “how to swim”, where first you walk in shallow waters with air filled floats and swimming wings keeping you afloat, then you swim alone in deeper water under your parent’s watchful eyes, gradually developing the urge to “dive deeper”? Jane Campbell so eloquently suggests that training has something perhaps to do with hope, with aspiration, with vision: something to do with a search for understanding, for understanding about oneself, and about others, about how to live, as well as about how to conduct groups.[8] Training in group analysis profoundly changes who one is. It is more than sum of all its parts. What is more, it is as puzzling as it is elusive. “Open communication seems to be the corner stone of therapy and it should be the corner stone of training.”

[1] WINNICOTT, D. W. “Transitional space” or BUBER, M. “das Zwischenmenschliche”

[2] WINNICOTT, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books.

[3] HEIDEGGER, M., & KRELL, D. F. (1993). Basic writings from “Being and Time” (1927) to “The Task of Thinking” (1964). London: Routledge.

[4] CAMPBELL, J. (2006): Chopping up the rainbow: Quality Assurance and the challenge to group-analytic training, Group Analysis, Vo. 39 (3): 341-355

[5] FOUKLES, S. H. (1986). Group-analytic psychotherapy: Method and principles. London: Maresfield Library. “The first and foremost need is to insist on his participating as a full member in a therapeutic group.”

[6] ibid.5

[7] BEHR, H. (2010). Malcolm Pines et al.: The Art of Teaching Group Analysis. Group Analysis The International Journal of Group-Analytic Psychotherapy, 43(3): 241-52.

[8] Ibid. 4

Iztok Prosen
iztok.prosen@siol.net