Group Methods of Treatment

The Tavistock Clinic has been using group methods on a large scale for the treatment of patients who would have to wait many months, and possibly years, if the Clinic relied upon the use of individual methods only. As a part of these activities I have been asked to investigate the possibilities of group methods of treatment, and it is about this that I wish to write.

In my opinion it was necessary to see if a form of treatment could be developed which was natural and proper to the group situation. In a psychoanalysis it is felt that certain conditions are essential to its proper conduct, the most obvious of these being the fact that there is one patient and one doctor. Most analysts would agree that this relationship between two people – and two people only – was essential for psychoanalysis. It was my desire to try to elaborate a form of treatment for the proper carrying out of which a group would be as essential as the intimate relationship between two individuals in psychoanalysis. In other words, I think that any form of treatment in which one feels that one has a group of patients faute de mieux is bad treatment; whereas any form of treatment, if it could be elaborated, to which a group was essential would be good treatment.

In psychoanalysis a means of investigation is at hand in the transference, but in the group situation I do not feel quite as happy about postulating a transference situation as I do about postulating a counter-transference. I know that it is not possible really to separate the two, but this description of the position as I see it, does, I hope, indicate a change of emphasis that I feel takes place when I change from individual to group treatment. It appears to me useful also to postulate a capacity in the individual for being sensitive to the emotional situation which he occupies in a group. I do not see how I

could address an audience unless I had an idea, however erroneous, about what the audience felt about myself. I think everybody woul