Group Analysis

This lecture takes a new look at Foulkes’ experience as a refugee from Germany. It questions the focus on the psychoanalytic component of group analysis at the expense of the more ‘revolutionary’ element Foulkes brought with him from his time of working with Kurt Goldstein in Frankfurt. I also suggest that de Maré’s longstanding relationship with Foulkes sowed the seeds of his groundbreaking work on the Larger Group. My thinking is based on a hypothesis that as de Maré’s dialogical approach bears an uncanny resemblance to the thinking of the ‘Frankfurt School’, it emerged via a form of ‘second generation transmission’ through Foulkes. I elaborate these ideas and develop my own perspective.

This article is a stream of consciousness response to my experience of coming to the Foulkes Lecture (Sommaruga von Howard, 2025) from India, and how that experience facilitated a reflection about why large groups are important to me. It is also a commentary on the necessity of movement and temporality, and the yearning for intimacy of something that is larger. It talks about the experience of ‘being at home’ when ‘not at home,’ and how the longing for wholeness of home can never be satiated. I describe the way large groups are spaces that can feel like a ‘home in movement,’ one that begins, ends, and waits to meet again.

In this personal reflection on Teresa von Sommaruga Howard’s Foulkes Lecture and Study Day (von Sommaruga Howard, 2025), I explore my experience of the event, and share how Teresa’s take on Foulkes, de Maré, and the convening of larger groups has come to influence my thinking/practice as a convenor of groups in organizational and community settings.

Many psychiatric units hold weekly large group sessions that bring together both staff and patients from the ward. These sessions serve a distinct purpose among various therapeutic activities, each with its own focus and objectives. However, participating in this form of therapy is challenging and requires significant effort and dedication from all involved, particularly the therapists.

This paper will explore my extensive experience in several units that follow this approach. Additionally, I will reference theoretical writers whose work I find relevant to the complexities of this activity.

The interactions within the large group reveal multiple contradictions that warrant examination. For example, while the group is intended to represent freedom and democracy, this stands in stark contrast to the highly regulated atmosphere experienced by patients. Furthermore, staff members’ reluctance to engage in open dialogue often hinders patients’ ability to express themselves freely.

Creating a truly open dialogue presents significant challenges for therapists. Some of these difficulties stem from discomfort—or even fear—when confronted with psychotic states. Additionally, therapists may hesitate to actively participate in discussions, seeking instead a form of psychological retreat

Revising the ‘locations of elaboration’ in group analysis shows that large groups have no less developmental and therapeutic impact on the individual and his relationship to society than small groups. The group-analytic large group can be considered as the potential space where the relations between individuals and their society can be investigated, elaborated and transformed. If free floating discussion is facilitated in the interaction among large group members, including the conductors, communication will allow the creation of a community in which even unbearable conflicts can be named and often contained and elaborated. Large groups provide a unique space in our modern life, where disordered relations with internal and external authorities can be faced and many other collective preoccupations coped with. Groups of 40+ participants are optimally prone to the elaboration of emerging shared concerns ranging from inclusion to rejection, socio-political identity formation, the splitting to subgroups and the restoration of peace-oriented matrices, as well as the accompaniment of war processes and other existential matrices.

Adding to the experiences with large groups per se, the potential and experiences with mixing large and small groups (e.g. the Sandwich or the Reflective Citizenship models) provide for even more unique opportunities to elaborate and digest social threats and excitements. Such multidimensional therapeutic space, enabled by fluid ‘locations of elaboration’ (Foulkes, 1948; Friedman 2024), extends the traditional group-analytic space for growth and therapy. These processes will be exemplified by a recent three-year process with Ukrainian colleagues.

Although it is known that the group stages share similar dynamics and the leaders have certain tasks in each stage, the experiences of group members could differ in each stage. The main purpose of this case study is to understand how guidance and psychological counselling students participating in a psychodrama group are affected by the process and how they experience each stage of the group. In this context, a 12-week psychodrama study was conducted with group members (n = 9), and qualitative data were collected to determine the self-perceptions of the members at the end. The thematic analysis of the study revealed six main themes: first emotions, difficulties, self-awareness, changing emotions, achievements and what they left to time. In the first sessions, it was observed that the members had difficulties in disclosing themselves and role-playing because they were excited, scared and worried. In the proceeding sessions, as the members gained confidence in the group and realized that they would not be judged, they relaxed and disclosed themselves. Many of the members who experienced many realizations noted the changes in themselves in the final sessions and emphasized that they needed time for some skills to be realized. In addition, the development of counselling skills such as empathy, listening and self-awareness as a result of the research reveals that psychodrama is a promising approach in developing and teaching counselling skills. Practical recommendations are presented for mental health professionals and researchers based on the study findings.

Decolonizing group analysis is not about group analysis analysing colonialism, but about addressing colonial dynamics in group analysis. The evaluative findings of the ‘Decolonizing the Curriculum of Group Analysis Project’ Report Nayak, 2023 call for critical reflection on existing frameworks leading to a thoroughgoing evaluation and re-design of practice. Five principles emerged as recurrent themes in the research data and anchor the recommendations. These principles offer a blueprint for decolonial re-design of group-analytic training and practice including a decolonial lexicon for decolonizing. Material shifts in power, privilege and position in the constitution of group-analytic knowledge mean questioning the who, what and why of knowledge production. Structures, mechanisms and decision-making processes are integral to the apparatus of knowledge production, including economies of money, ideology and representation. Approaches relying on the disproportionate labour of those with intersectional subjugated identities to drive decolonization do not represent an embedded systemic institutional commitment. Sustaining the shared task of decolonization requires reciprocity, sitting with discomfort and spaces for decolonial dialogue. Power, privilege and position shape different journeys in understanding and applying intersectional decolonization. The strategic future of the IGA, the viability of group-analytic trainings and the creative potential of group analysis will stand or fall on transforming inevitable intersectional racist colonial power relations