THE ANTI-GROUP

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THE ANTI-GROUP

• Destructive Forces in the Group and their
  Creative Potential
• Morris Nitsun
• Consultant clinical psychologist, Camden and
  Islington NHS FoundationTrust training group
  analyst (IGA London)

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THE SHADOW OF THE GROUPdisruptive and
destructive forces

• Morris Nitsun
• Consultant clinical psychologist, Group
  analyst, Private practitioner, the Fitzrovia
  Group Analytic Practice

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IGA SUPERVISION COURSE

• CREATIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE PROCESSES IN THE GROUP
• Morris Nitsun
• Consultant psychologist Camden and Islington NHS
  Foundation Trust, training group analyst (IGA
  London)

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• Strangely enough, the acknowledgement of the
• forces of destruction and their agencies helps us
  
• and makes us therapeutically far more powerful
• 
  Foulkes 1964

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• FOULKES BION
• Optimistic vision of the group
  Pessimistic vision of the group
• Individual is isolated but with
  Individual is deeply ambivalent
• potential for group membership about
  group membership
• Group as a reparative,
  Group as a regressive experience
• restorative exercise
• Committed himself to
  Withdrew from group work
• group work

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THE ANTI-GROUP

• Describes the negative, disruptive aspects of
  the group that can undermine the therapeutic
  task.
• A critical principle
• An explanatory paradigm
• A descriptive construct

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THE ANTI-GROUPDefinition

• A process not a fixed entity
• Latent and manifest forms
• Occurs at different levels individual,
  sub-group and group as a whole
• Reflects adverse group relationships in patients
  histories
• Recognition of Anti-group is necessary in order
  to
• - contain negativism and potential
  destructiveness
• - understand current and past origins
  of Anti-group
• - open the way for constructive group
  relationships
• Reflected in the wider social sphere

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THE COMMITMENTS

• Underlying tensions in the group
• Leadership
• Rivalry
• Envy
• Sexual secrets
• Individual vs. group orientation

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DETERMINANTS OF THE ANTI-GROUP

• Annihilation anxiety
• Psychological trauma
• Narcissistic injury
• Destructive envy and rivalry
• Failures of communication

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DETERMINANTS OF THE ANTI-GROUP (continued)

• Frustration of the one-to-one relationship
• The alienation of desire
• Attacks on linking
• Projective identification

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THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS (Nippets and Imps)

• Attacks on the group
• Loss and crisis
• New members
• Sense of survival
• Trust in the group
• Play / creative destruction

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Dealing with the Anti-group

• A working hypothesis
• Counter-transference reflection
• The connecting function
• Mentalizing the process