Systems-Centered Practice

Selected Papers on Group Psychotherapy

Yvonne M. Agazarian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781855753099
• eBook ISBN: 9780429919725
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Systems-Centered Practice presents a series of papers that trace the development of the theory of living human systems between 1987 and 2002. As the theory develops, so do the methods and techniques that put it into practice. The book also describes in detail the connection between the hierarchy of defence modification and the specific phases of system development that determine readiness for change. The papers in this volume contribute to our knowledge of the permeability of the boundaries between clinical and social psychology through the investigation of living human systems, and of systems-centered group and individual therapy. The author's considerable body of work constitutes a blend of creativity and learning of the highest order.

Chapter One
Group-as-a-Whole Theory applied to scapegoating

In this chapter I present a way of looking at groups from two perspectives: the perspective of the individual and the perspective of the “group-as-a-whole” (“Theory of the Invisible Group” —Agazarian & Peters, 1981). This theoretical framework applies practically to making interventions in groups. Choosing which level to influence can have significant impact upon the potential outcome of important therapeutic group issues. For example, interpreting scapegoating from the individual perspective will have a different impact from interpreting it from the group-as-a-whole perspective and may significantly influence the developmental potential of a psychotherapy group.

The underlying dynamic common to maturation of all human systems, be they as small as a cell or as large as society, is the functional discrimination and integration of differences, from simple to complex. This is the process that makes order out of chaos, makes the unconscious conscious, and codes information and organizes it in relation to group goals.

The development of mature problem-solving skills, whether they be by individuals or by groups, are therefore a function of the rate at which similarities and differences can be discriminated and integrated. The process is twofold: similarities and differences must be perceived—both the similarities in the apparently different and the differences in the apparently similar—and system equilibrium must be sufficiently maintained so that the work of integration can take place. Until discriminations are integrated, they are disequilibrating, chaotic. It is this chaos that the group system must contain while the work of discrimination and integration takes place.

All individuals in groups must defend against the chaos without as well as that within while they attempt to organize experience. The individual patient who enters a psychotherapy group does so because he needs therapy. But for the group to have a therapeutic meaning for that person, the group itself must be a therapeutic environment, and for it to become such an environment, it must develop mature problem-solving skills. This may sound like a contradiction in terms: that a group composed of members who had joined because they have serious developmental problems must work together to develop a healthy group. However, just as is the case with an individual, so how a particular group system develops depends less upon its genetic composition than upon the mechanisms it develops to contain chaos. And this is where the group therapist has influence.

The simplest way for a group to contain chaos is to split integratable information from non-integratable information and to contain the two kinds of information separately. This reduces the information overload, and the group can then use the information that is “similar enough” without being overwhelmed by information that is “too different”. The group therapist can help the group-as-a-whole to develop good skills in managing the containment of information. It is in this aspect that a theoretical framework can be useful to the therapist. Understanding the dynamics of both the individual and the group-as-a-whole systems permit the therapist to choose the intervention that has most therapeutic meaning for therapeutic development in the group.

In the theory section that follows, two separate but complementary systems are described: the system of the individual and the system of the group-as-a-whole. These two systems are hierarchically and isomorphically related. They provide the group psychotherapist with two views of the same group event, which permit two discrete dynamic explanations and two different pathways for making a therapeutic intervention. From the individual perspective, group psychotherapy is discussed in terms of how each individual’s psychodynamics are characteristically expressed in their membership behaviours, which are, in turn, modified by their interactions in the group. From the group-as-a-whole perspective, group psychotherapy is discussed in terms of how group dynamics are expressed in characteristic group-as-a-whole-role behaviours, which, by modifying the development of the group, result in modifying the individual members of the group.

Theory of the invisible group

The Theory of the Invisible Group describes the invisible inner dynamics and the visible external behaviour of living systems. When applied to groups, the individual system is defined in terms of (1A) the innerperson system and (1B) the member-role system; and the group system is defined in terms of (2A) the inner group-as-a-whole system and (2B) the subgroup-role system. Because these two systems are isomorphically related—that is, similar in structure and function—it becomes possible to explain group behaviour from two theoretical perspectives and to generate two apparently contradictory, but actually complementary hypotheses: (a) all group behaviour can be explained as a function of individual dynamics; (b) all group behaviour can be explained as a function of group dynamics.

The individual system

"Person" inner-system dynamics

From the perspective of the person, individual dynamics are understood as a function of inner-person psychodynamics that result from genetic inheritance, developmental history, environmental influences, and past experiences.

Person interventions focus on individual internal psychodynamics. They are designed to modify the ego defence mechanisms, both as they inhibit and as they potentiate individual problem solving. The target of a person intervention is the inner experience of the individual. A criterion of a successful person intervention is that the person gains insight through the physical, nonverbal experience of his dynamics. This is different from intellectual insight. Thus, for the individual who is the scapegoat, a successful intervention would result in the full experience of the dynamics of his masochism—not an intellectualized or verbal understanding of it.

"Member-role" behavioural dynamics

From the perspective of the member, individual behaviour is understood as a function of the interpersonal dynamics of the individual interpreted as a behavioural expression of past problem-solving role behaviours modified by the present interactions. These are usually expressed in reciprocal roles.

Member interventions focus on interpersonal dynamics and on how the tensions of internal experience are expressed or acted out in behaviour that attempts to solve internal problems by action in the outside world.

Thus for the individual in the role of the scapegoat, a successful interpersonal intervention would result in an understanding of how he had repeated in the present an old role relationship from the past, attempting to relieve current internal or external pressures by reliving old solutions (the repetition compulsion). Successful member interventions to the scapegoat lead to an understanding of how he repeatedly “volunteers” for the role and/or “coaches” a scapegoating response from the group members.

Unless patients get insight into their conflicts, they will continue to helplessly repeat them. However, the conflicts that are expressed in repetitive behaviour are frequently repressed or denied, and so for the scapegoat to get intellectual understanding of how he volunteers for the scapegoat role or how he elicits attack from others is often a useful step towards confronting denial or undoing repression and can therefore fulfil the criteria for a successful therapeutic intervention.

Group-system dynamics

"Group-as-a-whole" inner dynamics

From the perspective of the group-as-a-whole, group dynamics are understood as a function of the group composition, developmental history, environmental influence, and past experiences.

Group-as-a-whole interventions are designed to modify group-level defences. This is so both in the potentiating sense that group-level defences bind group-level chaos, and also in the inhibiting sense that the group-level defences limit problem-solving potential.

The target of the group intervention is the inner dynamics of the group. Group maturation is dependent upon the integration of differences. Splitting is a mechanism that permits the group to integrate information that is “similar enough” and to “split off” and “store” information that is “too different”. This carries the potential both for maturation and for fixation. In the management of scapegoating, for example, the therapists needs to be able to recognize when the underlying dynamics of scapegoating are part of a natural maturation process of the group-as-a-whole that an intervention would interrupt and when there is the potentiality for fixation that requires an intervention.

"Group-role" dynamics

From the perspective of the group role, group behaviour is understood as a function of subgroup-role relationships that enable the group to remain in a dynamic equilibrium. Thus tensions that are experienced within the group-as-a-whole, and which give rise to group-level defences, are expressed or acted out through behaviour that attempts to discharge the tensions and permit the group to solve internal and external problems.

Just as individual member-role behaviour serves an equilibrating function for the individual system, so group-role behaviour does for the group. It is as if the group-as-a-whole delegates one or more of its members to perform group roles that will bind, contain, or express group tensions, while it assigns other members, subgroups, or facets of the whole group to roles that facilitate work.

Group-role interventions assist the group to modify group-level defences and to develop problem-solving skills. A group-role intervention is the intervention of choice when it is appropriate to interrupt group scapegoating. It is an intervention that requires the group to make conscious and integrate the differences that the group has allocated to the scapegoat role. As group-level scapegoating entails group-as-a-whole acting out and projective identification, a successful group-as-a-whole intervention makes the dynamics conscious, undoes the projection, and confronts the denial. The integration work that follows serves as a powerful stimulus to therapeutic insight and development at both group and individual systems levels.

Scapegoating

Group therapists who know only the individual level of dynamics do not have a conceptual tool that will permit them to view group dynamics as a separate and discrete—though related—phenomenon. Thus, their understanding of the group is confined to the individual level, and their decisions to influence behaviour of the group must, of necessity, be targeted through the individual. This can have a significant impact not only on the probable outcome of the individual issues that members bring to group, but also, more seriously, upon the nature and potential of the development of the group itself. This is illustrated below by two different approaches to the handling of scapegoating in the group, which reflect the two different role perspectives: the member role as it relates to the individual and the group role as it relates to the group-as-a-whole.

The scapegoat is an excellent illustration of a member role at the individual level, and of the group role at the group level. Let us take, for example, a scapegoat, “Billy G”. Billy G comes into the group, and the group scapegoats him for behaving in ways that are too different for the group to tolerate. After some work, a compromise is worked out, and Billy G’s unacceptable behaviour is sufficiently modified by the group for him to be accepted as a member. In the process of modifying Billy’s behaviour, the group also modifies itself. There is some “give and take” on either side.

Examining the scapegoating event from the individual perspective, you will almost invariably find that Billy G’s psychodynamic solution to inner-person disequilibrium was to become a target; that he was the family member who was consistently scapegoated, that he has a history of being the lightning rod for anger. Even though he may experience being scapegoated as one of life’s most painful experiences, he helplessly volunteers for the role in the group, thus once again reproducing the experience. An individual interpretation to Billy G would help him to understand, in terms of his masochism, why he sets himself up in this way. An individual interpretation would carry a very good potential for doing excellent therapy against the matrix of the group at the person level, not only with Billy G, but, through resonance, with others in the group. The therapist could also point out the dynamics of the reciprocal interpersonal member behaviour. Those who attack Billy G are probably repeating their own familiar family bully roles in the group, and they also have the opportunity to gain insight into both their person and their member dynamics. Useful as it is to the individual, however, the individual system perspective does not tell the whole story.

Dynamically, at the individual level, Billy’s member-role behaviour of eliciting scapegoating serves an equilibrating function for his person system. From the group-system perspective it can also be said that scapegoating is serving an equilibrating function for the group-as-a-whole and that Billy G’s member-role behaviour is also serving an important group role. This understanding brings with it some important implications for group dynamic development.

A useful way of conceptualizing development, both at the individual level and also at the group level, is to think of maturation as a function of discrimination and integration. One of the attractions of conceptualizing maturation in this way is its elegant correspondence to the development of cell complexity through miosis, which results in living beings. Just as the maturation of the cells in a living being is a function of the discrimination and integration of similarities and differences of structure and function, so is the maturation of a group. However, the process of maturation of the group inevitably arouses resistance to change at the individual level. The work of perceiving and integrating differences must, by its very nature, arouse cognitive dissonance. One way of maintaining the comfortable equilibrium of homogeneity and avoiding dealing with emerging differences is to deny difference, to split off awareness, and to use a group member—usually one who volunteers for the role, as in the case of Billy G—as the container through projective identification. The group can then deal with that member as a “deviant” and bring the not inconsiderable group pressure for conformity to bear upon the deviant member. The group can maintain its norms unchanged if it either brings the member into line or excludes or extrudes him in order to “get rid” of the difference that it would otherwise have to integrate. Parenthetically, the same “containment” dynamic exists when a subgroup of the group rather than a single group member performs the group role—as, for example, when disagreement in a group is contained in a silent subgroup who do not give voice to their disagreement, or when differences in group feeling are isolated by a split, such as when the group functions at a level of intellectualized flight, with all feeling in the group denied and unavailable. There is a correspondence between these group-as-a-whole dynamics and the individual dynamics of denial, intellectualization, and isolation.

Thus, group-role dynamics represent an important step in containing, for the group, differences that it is not yet able to integrate and thus maintaining the group equilibrium. In the early phases of group development, scapegoating serves the function of containing differences that the group is not yet developmentally able to integrate.

Scapegoating occurs developmentally when group flight is giving way to group fight. During the flight phase, members solve differences through homogenous pairing: they pair for power and control——power to protect against control by others, by the leader, by the group, by unconscious forces; or power to control others, the leader, the group, unconscious forces. The fight phase introduces heterogeneity: dissimilar people fight, and in the process of resolving the fights members come to terms with differences. There are, however, differences that the group is not able to integrate, and the group solution is to project these into a deviant member who will contain them for the group. In the group communication pattern to a deviant person, the group pressures the member to conform to the group norms, to become converted, or to leave.

In the process of integrating the scapegoat, the group comes to tolerate some of the differences that had previously been intolerable, and these differences thus become available to the group as resources that would otherwise have been split of an remained unavailable had the scapegoating been resolved through conversion or extrusion.

It can now be shown clearly what happens dynamically to a group when the therapist works with scapegoating at the individual level. By targeting interventions, no matter what the content may be, at the individual level, the therapist joins the communication pattern to the deviant. This is the solution of the “identified patient” in groups—and in families, too—that maintains the group equilibrium by binding the underlying tensions in an acknowledged role that forms part of familiar role-interaction functions.

What happens when a psychotherapy group successfully works through a scapegoating phase? Two things: first, the person who is the scapegoat usually makes significant therapeutic gains; second, the group learns to tolerate differences that it would not have been able to tolerate had it not worked through a peer level. Whenever a group is unable to come to terms with differences, its potential for development and its potential for functioning as a therapeutic environment for the individual is inevitably limited. The basic dynamic of maintaining group-as-a-whole equilibrium through requiring a group-role system to contain, express, or voice dynamics of group function that are still in the process of being mastered by the group is true for each developmental phase of the group. It is therefore important for group therapists to be able to deliberately facilitate the process of differen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• FOREWORD
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE Group-as-a-Whole Theory applied to scapegoating
• CHAPTER TWO Re viewing Yalom: an interpersonal tale retold from the perspective of the group-as-a-whole
• CHAPTER THREE The difficult patient, the difficult group
• CHAPTER FOUR Group-as-a-Whole Systems Theory and practice
• CHAPTER FIVE The invisible group: an integrational theory of group-as-a-whole
• CHAPTER SIX The phases of development and the systems-centered group
• CHAPTER SEVEN Reframing the group-as-a-whole
• CHAPTER EIGHT Book review of Koinonia: From Hate, through Dialogue, to Culture in the Large Group
• CHAPTER NINE A systems approach to the group-as-a-whole
• CHAPTER TEN A systems-centered approach to individual and group psychotherapy
• REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX