The Discovery of Siblings: Oedipus joins a therapy group
Human beings are a social species. We do not spend our lives in twos, in dyads. From the beginning we are part of a group of three, each of us having been born into that threesome: mother, father and infant. In individual treatment the third party is present in the mind and in phantasy; in a therapy group, that third party is present in the room, not only in the mind. The belief, conscious or unconscious, that one is a parent’s only or most favoured child may be universal. Oedipus himself is felt to be unique, and special. In individual settings in which Oedipal issues emerge, the analyst is perceived as belonging to the more knowledgeable or parental generation, becoming the object of possessive love or rivalrous hostility. In this paper, I will give material showing how as members of a psychoanalytic therapy group realise that they must share the presence of a single therapist, they turn to each other for understanding instead of always to the therapist. Thus in terms of the generations, the connectedness in the room is primarily lateral, or horizontal, rather than vertical. This reflects Bion’s description of the move into a Work Group and away from a Basic Assumption Dependency group.
Members come to develop strong connections with each other. They are not family, neither are they friends, nor colleagues, although relationships within the group contain elements of each. As individual differences produce rivalries, irritations and alliances, as well as loyalties and feelings of affection, relationships in the group seem similar to those between siblings in a large family: Intimate knowledge of each other, a common language, plain – even blunt – speaking, which might include jokes; and an ambience that is ultimately supportive. That group members can discover how to use their 7 or 8 fellow members as honorary siblings can be very helpful to those who otherwise might remain restricted by their Oedipal conflicts, anxieties and illusions, stuck in a mental world in which an idealised sole possession of the parent (or transference equivalent) is felt to be not only the only but the most desirable solution to the difficulties of mental and personal life.
Caroline GARLAND spent many years as a clinician, teacher and researcher both in the Tavistock Clinic and in the Maudsley Hospital. Before beginning work in the National Health Service, she used to be an ethologist, studying the social behaviour of chimpanzees (and she speaks fluent chimpanzee), which she followed with a study of the behaviour of newborn babies in St. Marys Hospital, Paddington. Her subsequent clinical and academic work includes many publications, including three books: Children and Day Nurseries (1980), Understanding Trauma (1999, 2002) and The Groups Book: Psychoanalytic Group Therapy, Principles and Practice (2010). She has made a point of presenting the work of the Tavistock Clinic, and its relevance for modern mental health provision, to the general public. The BBC series Talking Cure was the first to have gone inside the consulting room to show genuine clinical encounters with actual patients. Garland also had much experience in working with groups, including consulting to organisations in trouble, and working in conflict situations at home and abroad. She was also one of the senior clinicians working with patients in the Tavistock Study of Long-Term Treatment-Resistant Depression – demanding but fascinating work, making emotional contact with people who have spent many years in a state of retreat, living in an emotional bunker from which they are hard to unearth.