THE GROUPS BOOK Psychoanalytic Group Therapy: Principles and Practice

On the whole, psychoanalysts—with the magnificent exception of Wilfred Bion and, to a lesser extent, S. H. Foulkes and the early analysts of the Institute of Group Analysis—have not had a great deal of time for groups as a medium for treatment. There is an implicit assumption that group therapy is a crude though economical form of treatment, suitable only for target-driven National Heath Services: eight patients seen in the same time that it takes an individual therapist to see a single patient and to make notes on the session. Yet from the moment of conception we exist as members of a social group, consisting of, at the very least, three members. Whether or not the conception follows an act of sex, or an assisted reproduction via artificial insemination by husband or by donor, and whether or not the father is an active presence in the mother’s life, he (or some version of him) has an existence in her mind, as the father of this baby. “Three” is the basis of the internal grouping in the mother’s mind, in the baby’s mind; and this “three” is the basic social unit, the primary group, whether in individual analysis or in group treatment.