THE GROUP-AS-A-WHOLE A P P R O A C H IN

F O U L K S I A N G R O U P ANALYTIC P S Y C H O T H E R A P Y
Malcolm Pines

The group analytic group-as-a-whole approach of Foulkes privileges

the concept of the group matrix. The term matrix is a metaphor for
"the network of all individual mental processes, the psychological
medium in which they meet, communicate, and interact." The developing group matrix acts both as a container and as a holding
environment for the psychic processes of the individual members in
the group context. The concept of coherency is evoked to describe the
process of the developing capacity of a group to be therapeutic. The
concept of coherency is applied both to conscious and to unconscious
mental process.

I shall organize my discussion around the theme of coherency, which I define

as "the meaningful organization of~parts that make a whole." I hope to make
my reasons for doing so clear and to show that the concept of coherency underlines and informs the concept of wholeness, which is intrinsic to the concept
of the group-as-a-whole.
Psychodynamic processes represent effort to make the organization of the
psychotherapeutic situation meaningful, therefore coherent. We take as our
data the set-up of patient and therapist.
In psychoanalysis the enterprise to un-cover and dis-cover underlining meanings in the psychoanalytic discourse produced by the basic rule of free association is governed by a conviction that it is possible to raise, apparently at
random, associations originating from a deeper level of consciousness, closer
to the primary process, than to the higher levels of secondary process organization, therefore of coherency.
We ask our patients to tell us their life stories, that is, we join them in a
narrative enterprise. When the life story of the patient fails to present a
mysterious incoherence, Freud regarded this as a sign that the neurotic process
was not present. As therapists we assume that a person's life has a story, that
the narrative will include both the self and significant others, that there will
be beginnings, middles and endings, causes, sequences, and some sense of
purpose. The defenses of our patients may range from the presentation to us
of an apparently complete story that has the effect of knocking the beginning
of a new story, the therapeutic enterprise; other patients will come with no
Address correspondence to: Malcolm Pines, 1 Daleham Gardens, London NW3, 5BY, England.
212 / GROUP, Volume 13, Numbers 3 & 4, Fall/Winter, 1989 Brunner/Mazel, Inc.

Group-as-a-Whole in Foulksian Group Analytic Psychotherapy / 213

story at all to tell, and then our task is to bring the person into a position of
being able to tell a story, to begin to play, as Donald Winnicott pointed out.
Our best patients are those who bring an interesting but mysterious story
which unfolds session by session and which holds the attention both of patient
and of therapist as we share the darkness of the unconscious processes of mind.
A great deal of our current discourse consists of metaphors which, according
to Lakoff and Johnson, are not mere linguistic devices. Our h u m a n thought
processes are largely metaphorical; there are metaphors in our conceptual
systems and metaphors bind elements into coherent systems. The "as if-ness"
of things is a key element of our therapeutic endeavor, but through this we
are able to move with our patients into a new mental space where the dynamics
of therapy intermesh with the internalized dynamics of the patient's life development.
Progress in psychotherapeutic theory is fundamentally our capacity to devise
new metaphors which will hold and contain our experiences and make them
intelligible to our peers. Each new field of endeavor both borrows from a
cultural vernacular and attempts to breathe new life into it, to suit its own
needs. The psychoanalytic paradigm was constructed at the turn of the century
and was based on evolutionary, geological, archaeological and energic physical
metaphors. Thus, the instinctual forces, originating in the primitive levels of
mind and of life experience, exert upward pressure on the higher levels of
organization, which resist this upsurge with downward pressure. The psychic
apparatus is organized to maintain a low level of mental stimulation; the
cultural restraints of society block a gratification of narcissistic and instinctual
satisfactions, and these restraints become internalized as the super ego. The
struggle to create new metaphors more consonant with present day concepts
of the organization of psychic life accounts for the turmoil within psychoanalytic theorizing.
Psychoanalytic theory has been based on Rickman's one-body psychology to
a large extent. The application of these concepts to the group field did not
represent the conceptual shift that was necessary to grasp the nature of the
new therapeutic situation of a number of persons meeting together with a
therapist, which was a new social contrivance. What the paradigm shift needed
was a field theory and this came from gestalt psychology, principally through
the work of Kurt Lewin. Gestalt psychology developed to oppose faculty psychology and emphasized the wholeness of perception. Lewin transposed this
approach to psychology of the person, the individual situated in and moving
through a life space, the psychological field where all psychic events occur.
The person and the environment are viewed as one constellation of interdependent factors. The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset gives as an answer
to the question "Who am I?": "I am myself plus my circumstances." Thus, man
is situated in his environment, and that which stands around him, his circumstances, are essential to a dynamic social psychology that situates the person
firmly in his or her environment and that will not perform the fallacy of an
arbitrary division of the essential unity that is man-in-the-world.
The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of social and industrial psychology and
of new attempts to conceptualize an interpersonal psychology that could account adequately for the complexity of h u m a n life in h u m a n society. Sociology
and anthropology mated with psychodynamics and produced a much greater
appreciation of the collosal forces of society that penetrate the individual to
the very core. We came to appreciate that the Western individual of the 20th
century significantly differs from his ancestors because he is born into a different sociocultural matrix from that of his forefathers, for the social matrix

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structures and moulds the basic drives from conception onwards. This Foulkes
termed the Foundation Matrix.
The importance of language in capturing experience and in making it available for thought and for speech is a psychosocial factor of prime significance
and needs to be seen on a par with the significance of biological constitution.
This is expressed in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
In the same era Trigant Burrow began his long odyssey to explore and to
describe group psychology and the social basis of consciousness. His work is
a largely unseen background to much later work in social psychology and
group psychotherapy. Burrow's work was known to Foulkes, through his work
with Kurt Goldstein, and he was also aware of Kurt Lewin's approach. However, we should credit Foulkes with the most original and striking articulation
of the group-as-a-whole approach.
Foulkes' definition enables us to hold the background/foreground gestalt
concept that both individual and group, group and individual are represented
in the therapist's observational field. This therapeutic approach is a natural
development from a foundation both emerging from and imbedded within a
matrix.
"The network of all individual mental processes, the psychological medium
in which they meet, communicate, and interact, can be called the matrix. This
of course is a construct--in the same way as is, for example, the concept of
traffic, or for that matter of mind . . . . There can be no question of a problem
of group versus individual, or individual versus group. These are two aspects,
two sides of the same coin." This fundamental attitude must arise from an
integrated intellectual and emotional attitude, a conviction best obtained in
a group analytic training. This will guide the therapist and will enable him/her,
acting as group conductor, to trust the group.
What does this m e a n - - t o trust the group? To me, it means that I profoundly
believe that when working with a reasonably well-selected group, we shall
both explore and resolve whatever dynamic issues arise in the course of group
discussion. Our understanding of the analytic group's capacity to accomplish
this is represented in Foulkes' Basic Law of Group Dynamics.
The deepest reason why patients can reinforce each other's normal reactions and wear down and correct each other's neurotic reactions is that
collectively they constitute the very norm from which individually they
deviate. Each individual is to a large extent part of the group to which
he belongs and this collective aspect permeates all through to his very
core. In so much that he deviates from the norm of his group he is a
variant of it and it is this very deviation that makes him into a unique
individual. Thus, within a group, individuality manifests itself as variations upon a common ground. The sound part of individuality is both
supported in a group, and, as a therapeutic culture develops, the further
growth of healthy individuality is approved and supported by the group
as a whole. Neurotic processes, that is symptoms and neurotic aspects of
individuality, diminish as their individual meanings become communicated and understood, both by the patient and by the other members of
the g r o u p . . .
The group can only grow by what it can share and only share what it
can communicate and only "communicate" by what it has in common,
e.g., in language, that is, on the basis of the community at large. In that
sense group treatment means applying "commonsense"--a sense of the

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community--to a problem by letting all those openly participate in its
attempted solution who are in fact involved in it.
In the language of information theory, when individual organisms come together to form a group, we have a vastly enriched informational structure. It
is through this that the group develops the capacity to achieve new and higher
levels of integration and differentiation, greater than that of the ordinary
individual, especially if he/she is held together by neurotic structures that
resist change by repelling new information. In the group analytic situation,
neurotic structures can be seen as obstacles to the development of new and
progressive forms and levels of communication. Defensive maneuvers show as
figures against the ground of the group dynamic matrix, which essentially
deepens and enriches the personal experience of the individual group members.
Rationalization, denial, projection, and repression become clear to the other
group members because they impinge on their personal relationships with
each other and can be seen to affect the group process. Resistances to selfunderstanding are greater than resistances to understanding others, for we
are less threatened by their conflicts and better able to perceive them. Thus,
each person inevitably takes a part in the evolution of group life, which,
hopefully, widens the range of understanding of each person through the much
greater and wider range of information that is available to the group-as-awhole. The group process shows a rhythm and polarity between integration
and differentiation. Differentiation arises through the uniqueness of individuals, integration through their commonality. The integration that comes about
through the working through of diversity and conflict represents the achievement of coherency, and the experience of working toward and achieving this
coherency becomes laid down in the dynamic group matrix. We can conceive
of the coherency that is reached through the work of the group and the conductor, for instance, by the recognition of common group themes, as raising
the level of understanding and adaptation to a higher common denominator
than that which would be achieved were a therapeutic attitude absent. This
therapeutic attitude must constantly come from the conductor, but very important contributions to it will come from the group members.
A basic function of the group-as-a-whole is to hold and contain psychic proce s s e s - t h e thoughts, feelings and attitudes of its members--which appear as
foreground against the background of the group situation. Holding and containing are valuable metaphors, which have only entered into our terminology
comparatively recently, as we have widened and deepened our knowledge both
of the therapeutic situation and of psychic development in infancy. We use
these metaphors to describe and to understand basic maternal functions. Holding comes from Winnicott, for whom holding is the basis for becoming a self
experiencing thing, and reliable holding has to be a feature of the environment
for the going-on-being of the infant. The environment, environmental mother,
and object mother provide a continuation of physiological provisions of the
prenatal state. The mother has to manage the extrauterine matrix and understand the needs of the infant, both physiological and psychological, and
provide both protection from physiological insult and from overstimulation
and the optimal stimulation that is needed for development. Mother is caregiver and can be replaced by other caregivers, but the basic requirements must
be met. Holding is a metaphor based on physical experiences that coherently
brings together a whole variety of maternal acts and attitudes.
The notion of containment comes from Wilfrid Bion, whose model of the
container and the contained has extended our grasp of early mother/infant

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relationships. The infant's primitive affects and anxieties are taken in, understood and dealt with by the caregiver's intuitive capacities for containment.
The processes of intuition, empathy, and active ministrations can be characterised coherently through the metaphor of containment. Both mother and
infant are containers of psychic events and processes of exchange take place
continually between them, mother having the capacity to contain and to transform primitive infantile states of being and to hand them back to the infant
at a higher level of process and integration. In the group situation, these are
the functions of the group-as-a-whole.
There is an essential paradox in the group situation. These basic functions
of holding and containment coexist with a culture that is based on analysis
and translation, which are sophisticated higher levels of mental functioning.
Thus, there are inherent contradictions in the group situation, a delicate,
stable yet unstable balance that has constantly to be monitored and managed.
Early developmental processes reenacted in the group can be held, contained
and tolerated as the group can function at a higher level and is available to
the individuals, often more adequately and appropriately than were the containers and holders of the patient's early experienes. Thus the members develop
their capacity to think in the face of pain and to tolerate and to know the
unthinkable.
So finally I come to an attempt to define the group-as-a-whole in group
analytic terms: It is the basic concept underlying the approach to a group that
meets in a standard group analytic situation, which privileges communication,
and in which the therapeutic aim is to enable both individual a n d group coherency to emerge over time at both conscious and unconscious levels. Increased
unconscious coherency represents the establishment and enrichment of the
group matrix. The conscious coherency comes as a result of the working out
of interpersonal issues that arise inevitably in the group situation.
I have written elsewhere about the principle of coherency and will briefly
review the main issues. Freud described the ego as a "coherent organisation
of mental processes." This applies both at the conscious and the unconscious
levels. It is Loewald who has pointed out that Freud makes the important
distinction between a coherent unconscious and the repressed unconscious.
The unconscious is not an area of chaos and incoherency. Those attributes
belong to the repressed unconscious but not all that is unconscious is repressed
and in an incoherent state. Loewald maintains: (a) What is internalized becomes an inherent part of a coherent ego which has both conscious and unconscious aspects. (b) What is repressed is split off in the coherent ego. (c) We
must distinguish between the processes of repression and the processes of
internalization. The latter are involved in creating and increasing the coherent
integration and organization of the psyche as a whole, whereas repression
works against such coherent psychic organization by maintaining a share of
psyche processes in a less organized, more primitive state.
These are the processes we increasingly recognize are involved in infant
caregiver transactions and that lay down the matrix of personality and social
capacity. The group-as-a-whole concept presages these findings and encourages
us in our search to extend and amplify the study of these processes both in
infancy and at all developmental levels in both social and individual psychology.