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DEVELOPING A CULTURE FOR CHANGE IN GROUP ANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR MOTHERS AND BABIES
Author(s) -
James Jessica
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
british journal of psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.442
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1752-0118
pISSN - 0265-9883
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-0118.2002.tb00063.x
Subject(s) - psychology , psychotherapist , action (physics) , group psychotherapy , child psychotherapy , modality (human–computer interaction) , group process , therapeutic approach , developmental psychology , medicine , physics , human–computer interaction , quantum mechanics , computer science , disease , pathology
I take clinical material from a nine‐month period in a slow open analytic psychotherapy group for mothers and babies, to illustrate its potential as a therapeutic modality. I describe the process of creating a reliable setting, or ‘group culture’, and its role as a prerequisite for therapeutic change. Vignettes are used, alongside my commentary, to display the passionate involvement between mothers and infants, also with therapists, which develops in a shared therapeutic experience. Relationships formed in this group provide the vehicle for its holding and containing capacity, as members grow up and live through, collapse and recover, re‐visit and re‐work their internal worlds through the group's weekly action. I make reference to mothers and babies using titles based on their behaviour. This is an aide‐mémoire for the reader's mind which, of course, doesn't mean that each individual behaved only in that way.