My Group Analyst and My Psychodramatist

Summary

This is a review of the points I consider fundamental to the approaches of group analysis and psychodrama. I  was trained successively in both approaches. This has led me to an eternal internal dialogue between the two forms of intervention that are different.

I conclude with some reflections on the role of what is received and learned, and on innovations in our field of psychotherapy and group psychotherapy.

My Group Analysis

I trained in group analysis through an experiential group that lasted five years. Although there were theoretical elements in it, the experiential part was fundamental. This happened during the phase of my specialization in psychiatry, more than thirty years ago. Today I see that there are more people that I attend in my private practice in the form of group therapy than in individual therapy. Incidentally, the group-therapeutic modality, valued as more effective and economical than individual therapy, is less used than the latter, at least in Spain.

Later I trained in psychodrama which is the other pillar of my professional practice with groups and individuals.

Which elements seem key to me in what I consider to be group analysis? How have they stayed with me in my group practice? I include in these elements of psychoanalysis:

The unconscious

I am endlessly fascinated by the omnipotence of the unconscious. It is present in my work every day.

Group thinking

The conceptualization of the group as an emotional whole is a bright and necessary concept in a culture that emphasizes individuality. It allows us to address emotions experienced by the group as a whole. Without that concept we would lose the fundamental elements of what happens to us as a group. This powerful concept has led some professionals to make interpretations only to the group and not to the individuals that it is comprised of. I think, if we only do interpretations to the group, we lose a lot of therapeutic capacity. The other extreme would be that we do therapy “in” the group, addressing in turn the individual problems of each member. We would lose almost all the possibilities of the group therapeutic resource.

Approached on a collective level, as a collective unconscious, it gives us many possibilities to understand macro-group and social movements. Something important in these times of globalization.

The emerging group

When someone makes an observation in the group, it can be read as a popup, a message of what the group is experiencing as a whole, or a subgroup of it. That does not invalidate the personal meaning for the messenger. The conductor, unaccustomed to the group view, will make only individual interpretations of what a member says.

Transference

Through it, the members of the group go through conflicting situations that occurred in the family of origin. The classic transference in individual therapy is to see in the therapist, the maternal or paternal figure with whom there is residual work on unresolved issues . In the group, multiple transfers are made to the conductors and to the other members of the group. We bring to the group laboratory the residual work to be resolved. We explore in it, how to approach the work and find resolution.

The interpretation of resistances

Resistances constitute all the forces that oppose the change to the advancement of understanding, to the sharing of thoughts or shameful feelings, etc. Here the therapist is often alone in his task of interpreting as a resistance: an absence or delay in a session, when external reasons are also used to that end. The conductor must always take into account how the resistances play their part at all times.

The “here and now” 

It consists of approaching what is happening in the group at each moment on the level of emotions and interactions. Something seemingly simple, has an enormous capacity for revealing conflicts. And it is absolutely “politically incorrect” since in social groups the approach to this plan is carefully avoided. It will often be the conductor who has to invite the participants to address it. Interestingly, psychodrama also addresses the ” here and now” but in another way. When we stage a scene, we invariably do it by going to a time that has already passed, but moving on to live it in the present, in the “here and now”. That brings back emotions that remain encapsulated at that time.

Free discussion

In the free flow discussion (Foulkes S. H., 2007), the group speaks freely without a pre-established theme. This allows the group’s unconscious elements to appear. I qualify this at another point.

Therapeutic neutrality

I do not know to what extent in group analysis today, the position of therapeutic neutrality is defended. Therapeutic neutrality is very much related to opacity. We are obviously not neutral within ourselves and denying it can be a problem. Given this, we can talk about opacity as blocking the passage of what we feel to the outside.

Most communications, according to experts, are conveyed in a non-verbal or paraverbal form (intonations and other sonorous nuances of verbal communication). Silence does not preserve opacity. On this delicate subject Yalom (1986) gives us a chapter on the dilemma between transference and transparency of the group conductor.

Initially, the therapeutic opacity facilitates the transferential projections of the group participants onto the therapist. The therapist must keep his or her personal convictions separate from the group, as well as many of his or her emotional responses. Their task is to help the group and any displays of emotion must be made because it helps the group in its task.

When we begin our training that opacity of the therapist can extend towards inaction as a way of protecting ourselves based on our insecurity. Treading the same fine line is the position of holding the group fully responsible for the session, with the conductor abstaining from the key interventions that would lead the group towards the objectives for which it is convened. The group analytic technique can make us run the risk of becoming curious observers of group phenomena, leaving the group somewhat alone in its advances and resistances. I believe that we must make vigorous interventions in the face of group resistances. We are often alone in these confrontations. Our position is very ambiguous. On the one hand, we must be clear by explaining resistances. On the other hand, we must respect these as lawful and coming from the need for self-protection. It often occurs to me that validating resistance as legitimate, after making it explicit, allows it to be overcome.

We are not neutral. We work with an invisible matter and we are always, and must be, wondering if we are doing a good job, if we are giving the right touch to the complex situations that groups pose to us. Group resistances can make us feel that we are doing it wrong. We can rely on the group working well to positively value our work. In addition, if we are in a private context, and it is our income, if the members are going deeper, indicates that the group will not dissolve as ineffective, and that we will continue to have that income. In other contexts, it is prestige that is at stake.

In my experience, whenever I have shared something personal with the group, it has been appreciated and it has increased group cohesion. Yalom tells us about the dilemma of transference versus transparency (1986). I have always used it to achieve group goals and not to meet my emotional needs. For example, to make them see that I am not a  “super-healthy ” person when working with mentally ill people and that I experience conflicts as they do. I can invite them to imagine what problems I have, what their intuition tells them, their “tele” as Moreno would call it (Rodriguez, 1997) . I do not hide that it can be helpful to see real elements of my personal discomfort, as well as what says about them in what they see in me (the projective element). That concerns how the transference is handled. Everything a patient sees in us, is not necessarily transferential or projected from their own life. It is also often touching our own sensitive emotional points.

It has always been a question for me to review the extent to which group analysts shirk our responsibility to intervene, leaving it all to the group. In this sense, for a long time I have been openly critical of the leadership of large groups in the conferences of national and international associations of professionals working with groups. Such group experiences that include a large part of the participants of the conferences can bring together more than one hundred people. In some experiences these have been rewarding and cohesive. But in others, they have been hostile and traumatizing, anti-groups in fact. The conductors have been passively engaged in taking note of defensive and hostile elements, taking no responsibility for creating group cohesion and building a climate of trust. Yalom (2018) tells us about the creation of a group Climate as the main task: “vigorously confronting …the use of self-disclosure for attack in a time of conflict”. I do not share that model of conductor who does not take responsibility for creating a climate and confronting anti-cohesive behaviours. The role of conductor has a responsibility. It may not be easy to take on that role among so many participants who in other contexts are also conductors. On those occasions, it seems as if the experts in groups give up applying our knowledge.

On other occasions I have felt the cohesion, the “Koinonia” of Pat De Maré (1991) when he approached his medium groups.

Silence

This is a topic closely related to neutrality and opacity. The conductor’s silence is an enormous and invaluable resource. It allows the participants to take responsibility for the development of the group. The first inclination of any group is to wait for the conductor to lead the way, from the participation guidelines, to suggest the topic. The initial silence confronts its members with their responsibility to speak and get involved. The silence confronts the conductor in his fantasies of entering a role of “Saviour” and returns him a little to his authentic, less omnipotent role.

Silence can evoke a lot of aggressiveness against the conductor and facilitate a work based on what has been projected onto him, based on the transference.

But silence, as with any resource, has its excesses and its problems of excess. Silence can create a lot of anxiety so that it paralyzes the group process. The first danger may be that of falling into a power struggle: “let’s see who holds out the longest”. When we come to this, we are no longer in the field of collaboration but in the field of competition. It is acceptable for the group to adopt this position, but not for the conductor to adopt it. The group is not there to measure against.

No two silences are alike. When in a context of individual therapy I feel that a sterile silence is occurring, I try to talk about it, ask about how is it, ask what it looks like, where it is felt, what bodily sensations accompany it, etc. I allude to what my intuition leads me to feel that is happening in that silence. Also, to how hard the silence can be, empathizing with what I sense is being felt. In the group I try to give an interpretation of why the group is silent. Sometimes silence is the most powerful of group messages. If the group is new and will be short-lived, I usually avoid the initial silence and conduct myself with a more managerial role. I understand that they will not have time to understand its meaning and that it can make the task sterile.

The acting-out

It is essential for me to consider certain behaviours: absences, delays in payment, etc., as emerging unconsciousness that replace the awareness of particular feelings. It is essential to return that to the group.

My Psychodrama

Years later I incorporated psychodrama into my training through a three-year training program. This paradigm initiated by Moreno, bases his approach to groups on action. “Don’t tell me, let’s do it.” Unlike the group analysis that is performed sitting, psychodrama promotes getting up from the chair and enacting as if we were in a “here and now”, in a scene close to the theatre. Its two engines are spontaneity and creativity.

For a few years I only used the resource of psychodrama in teaching activities on communication, leadership, teamwork, etc. They were short workshops with people from the field of psychology and other professional fields. It seemed to me that the initial silence was very violent, generated a lot of aggressiveness and there was no time to process those emotions and get them a proper performance.

Subsequently and gradually, I incorporated action into the psychotherapy groups. It took longer for that resource to appear in my individual therapies. I ended up expanding the individual space so that the action was more possible.

Psychodrama gives the director a more active and, in a sense, managerial role that is more acceptable for a short course. The dependent and defended expectation before a course is that the director will impart knowledge. It is in the ability of the psychodramatic director, to put that directivity at the service of the group with directive proposals that allow the group to address what it has inside and does not dare to take out.

This incorporation has allowed me to reflect deeply on previous experience with group analysis. In the psychodrama an element is introduced that I did not notice before and that now seems to me key. It is the concept of warming up.

Warming-up

Every group encounter from the psychodramatic paradigm begins with a warm-up. This is usually in the form of action with movement that is proposed by the director. This is totally opposite to the group analytic technique. In my opinion, the initial group analytic technique confronts us with our individual responsibility to participate and gives us the opportunity for a group free flow of ideas. Those two maxims are skipped by the director of psychodrama. In my experience, many resistances often arise with the initial silence.

Warming up with movement is also feasible to perform in individual therapy.

In my experience, the group moves much more quickly towards deepening when the warming up is introduced by the director. Therefore, even if the therapy group is a verbal group, I usually include some warm-up exercise.

The body

On the other hand, psychodrama, with action, has incorporated another element that I have been including more and more in my work as something fundamental: the body.

The body had remained somewhat ignored, beyond being a carrier of nonverbal communication, in my therapeutic practice, both individual and group. At this moment I consider the body as a fundamental sensor of our emotions, both in individual and group therapy. When we are going through emotions that we do not become aware of, it is often the body that makes us feel them. We can feel a precordial tightness, a lump in the throat, a prick in the abdomen, etc. These sensations are usually emotional emergent, from both individual and group emotions. Someone in the group with his feeling may be saying something that happens to the whole group and of which he is emergent.

These body readings are applied both to what the group members say and to my own feelings at each moment in the group. They help make me aware of my own feelings.

When we share experiences after a psychodramatic representation, I usually differentiate sensations (more bodily), from feelings (emotions) and evocations (scenes brought to me by the scene that someone has brought). For the purpose of processing the scene, in psychodrama no interpretations are made.

Don’t tell me, let’s do it

In psychodrama we substitute recounting for entering the scene. This difference is fundamental. When we try this with a patient or protagonist, they usually resist and prefer to recount. Why? Because they know that, if they get into the scene, in the “here and now” of that traumatic moment that has conditioned their life, they will enter those emotions that were somewhat encapsulated. And they resist it. It is precisely those avoided emotions that continue to hurt in the present.

When we go to represent, we take a much bigger step than it seems.

I usually resort to psychodrama when the person is rationalizing a lot, when they are going around concepts that do not move them. They may be people who know all their traumas and emotional impacts they had, but nothing moves them on. they are defending themselves against experiencing emotions which are most fundamental.

Do not interpret

In psychodrama a scene is depicted that brings a participant (among other many possibilities of these active techniques). In this scene the protagonist show themselves in a very deep and wide way. They undress much more than in a verbal narration of the scene. When after the scene is shared, the participants may be tempted to give interpretations of what happens to the protagonist. These interpretations must stop because the protagonist has been very naked before the group and the whole scene has been an interpretation, but in another way (by means of what is happening in the scene, the dubbing, etc.). When, despite saying it clearly, this behaviour occurs, it may be because of a resistance to enter into their own experiences and scenes. Another reason may be to be accustomed to another more interpretative model, even more if the person is a professional outside the group. It’s not usually very common.

Do not interpret? But in group analysis the return that some members make towards others, the mutual interpretations, are beneficial and welcome. How do I mix both techniques and both messages? My experience with both paradigms has led me to be very careful with the interpretations that are made by the members of the group. An interpretation or return from one member to another can be a very valuable thing, done from the heart. Or it can be something defensive-aggressive towards the other. When I suspect or feel that second position, I use what I call putting the mirror on the person doing it. I ask them about what internal elements lead them to make that intervention. When members do not say things to each other I point out and encourage them to do so.

Dialogues between my psychodramatist and my group analyst

My group analyst tells my psychodramatist that he is in a continuous acting out, that he does not know why he gets up to do something without being aware of his unconscious motivations.

My psychodramatist tells my group analyst to let himself flow, to trust more in his intuition, in his unconscious “tele” of Moreno and take action without thinking so much. To assume the responsibility of having conceived a scene or the exercise of action that the group needs and to propose it. That he is very comfortable not getting up or exposing himself. Since he tells me that, he does not let me rest and forces me to work more.

My group analyst tells my psychodramatist to focus more on unconscious group dynamics and try to address them. Let it not be lost in the “having fun” of the action, that all that action is not an end in itself, it is a means of exploration.

My group analyst tells my psychodramatist that the group prefers to be directed, to be led rather than taking responsibility for taking initiatives and responsibilities of what they are feeling.

My psychodramatist tells my group analyst to let out their creativity and spontaneity in action, that group analytic silence can generate more resistance than involvement in its members. My group analyst answers that this is easy to propose with the experience of so many years of groups that could not have been so “spontaneous” from the beginning.

My group analyst tells my psychodramatist that the silence and frustration of the role expected by the group to lead them, facilitates the emergence of a taboo feeling: anger, and that this helps to elaborate what they have with the parental figures. My psychodramatist tells him that he is right but that he can also be taken out in different scenes that are worked on.

My group analyst tells my psychodramatist that he wants to show off and control himself. My psychodramatist tells my group analyst that he wants to hide and give in to his responsibilities.

My psychodramatist and my group analyst agree on one thing: there are more active personalities, some more corporeal that adapt more easily to psychodrama and others more reflective that adapt more to group analysis. Both know that there are also cultures that, along the same lines, facilitate one or the other paradigm.

They talk to each other, they do not agree, but the group always benefits from their disputes and uncertainties. Because uncertainty, if tolerated, is good counsel.

Final reflection

Affiliations to schools are necessary to begin forays into a complex world such as psychotherapy and all the different contexts of working with groups. We must not forget that these affiliations to schools are based, in addition to the need to learn from the wisdom of those who preceded us, on elements of professional insecurity, very understandable in such a complex world. I do not say that the comfort of knowing and managing an already familiar methodology does not play its role when exploring evolution with different forms of approach.

Are we creating, mixing new procedures in group therapy, group analysis, psychodrama, etc? If we are, then are we sharing these with others?

Bibliographic references

Yalom I.: “theory and practice of Group Psychotherapy”. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico 1986. Page: 89-90.

Foulkes S. H.: “grupoanalisis terapeutico”.Cegaop Press. Barcelona 2007. Pagans: 151-152

Yalom I.: “theory and practice of Group Psychotherapy”. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico 1986. Pagans: 206-233

Rodríguez J. A.: “Psychodrama.Theory and practice”. Desclée De Brouwer. Bilbao, 1997. Faggot: 3740

De Maré P. : “Koinonia: from Hate Trought Dialogue and the Larger Group. Karnac Books. London, 1991)

Goyo Armañanzas Ros
Psychiatrist, group analyst and psychodramatist. He directs training programs in Psychodrama and in Group Analysis. He combines both methodologies in his clinical and teaching activities. He runs Go Groups.
goyo@gogrupos.com