INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP WORK

When humanistic psychology first came on the scene, the main emphasis was on group work to help in the process of self- understanding; but today there is about equal emphasis on individual work, too.

The advantage of a group is that you get a great deal of stimulation from the other people in the group. They are there to work on themselves, just as you are, and by seeing them do it you get more of an idea as to how to do it yourself. Also some of the issues they raise may touch you personally; one of the key findings of humanistic psychology is that the deeper and more personal is the material which comes out, the more universal it is, and the more it connects with other people in the group.

All humanistic groups are experiential, which means that they are based on experience. (One of the standard misprints is to put "experimental" instead, because the correct word is less familiar.) Nobody just sits back and listens, nobody just sits back and takes notes - all are participants. To give the flavour of a typical humanistic group, see the hints given in Figure 2.

[Figure 2 - coming soon]

A group tends to go on longer than an individual session - it may run for a two or three hour evening, or a six, eight or ten hour day, or a weekend, or five or ten days. Or it may be run as a marathon, with 20, 30 or 48 hours of continuous work. This makes a group very intensive, because there is a continuous build-up of trust and confidence in the group as time goes on, which enables people to go deeper inside themselves and open up their most important blocks and hangups.

The advantage of work on a one-to-one basis, on the other hand, is that you have the time all to yourself to go into something in detail and work it through at your leisure, perhaps over a number of sessions. By having someone who is there just for you, you can have much more choice over what to go into and how to go into it. If you have a crisis, it is ideal to work on it in a one-to-one way, without the distractions of a group. An individual session may last anything from a few minutes to several hours, but the most usual practice is for it to last for one hour. Sometimes this becomes 50 minutes, if the practitioner is heavily booked throughout the day and needs ten minutes between sessions.

Normally you would sign up for one weekend at a time with group work, or for a limited series (usually six to ten) of evening groups. But with individual work, because of its slower pace, it is more usual to leave it open-ended, and to arrive at a mutually agreed time to stop. It is realistic to think in terms of a commitment to individual work of one or two years (depending on whether the sessions are once a week or twice a week) before getting too impatient about it. Something which took a long time to build up may often take a long time to dismantle. Also sometimes things get worse before they get better, because you are uncovering things you have covered up for what seemed at the time to be good reasons. But most people seem to come to the conclusion that it is worth it, because thay come out at the other end feeling much better about themselves and their relationships.

It is a very effective practice to use group work for shaking loose a lot of material, and individual work for working through it more thoroughly. There can be an analogy here with mining for valuable ore. But there will be variations on this depending on which specific approach is taken.

It cannot be emphasised enough that the time taken is very variable, and depends in part on what is being worked on. If there is a crisis, this can often be got through quite successfully in three months or so. If there is a persistent symptom, but with an obvious cause, this too can usually be dealt with quite quickly. But for the kind of change of total character or personality which in many cases is needed, a process is involved which may take ten years or so to complete (probably not all with the same person or group). Life- changing does not come easy or cheap.

Sometimes there is a two-phase process, where you come to a therapist with a problem which seems quite straightforward. You get somewhere with the immediate problem in a reasonable stretch of time, but in the process discover other things about yourself which you had not suspected. In recent years, for example, many people have discovered that they were sexually abused in childhood. These were not conscious memories, because they had been buried in the recesses of the mind as being too horrible. But in the process of opening up in therapy, where a lot of trust is involved in the best cases, these things have come to the surface. These deeper problems may then need to be worked through on their own account. This will be phase two. And this will obviously take longer again.

James Bugental, the first president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and a warm and human psychotherapist, used to say that therapy that intends being life-changing is a demanding undertaking, expensive in terms of time, intrusion upon ordinary life, emotional energy and money. It therefore involves commitment to a degree which is often not understood at first by the person who comes for help. Most people underestimate the amount of time and energy they have to commit to the process, if they want to pursue the matter to its end.

This does not mean, incidentally, that the whole job has to be done with just one therapist. It is often a very good idea to spend some time with a male therapist and some time with a female therapist. The two experiences are complementary and may be better than either alone.

It has to be said that all therapy is open to abuse, particularly by enthusiastic but untrained people, but also by experienced people who should know better. The safeguard against this is to make sure that the therapist belongs to an organization which has a complaints procedure should anything go wrong.

BOOKLIST

Axline, Virginia M (1971) Dibs: In search of self Harmondsworth, Penguin. An un-put-downable book on a five-year-old in play therapy. The best book to read first in humanistic psychology. Totally absorbing.

Brammer, L M & Shostrom, E L (1989) Therapeutic psychology: Fundamentals of counselling and psychotherapy (5th ed) Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall. This is a big humanistic text, covering theoretical foundations, process, readiness for counselling, the therapeutic relationship, strategies and methods, and special chapters on groups, couple and family work, career development, etc. Section on interpretation, resistance and countertrans-ference, and a piece on the assumptions made by humanistic psychotherapists.

Ernst, Sheila & Goodison, Lucy (1981) In our own hands: A handbook of self-help therapy London, The Women's Press. This is all about group work, with good chapters on gestalt, encounter, body work, symbol and fantasy, psychodrama, regression, lots of practical hints and exercises and a good chapter on politics. It is addressed to women, but is equally applicable to men. Gendlin, Eugene (1981) Focusing New York, Bantam. Says some very fundamental things about the process of therapy or counselling, based on thorough research. Offers a way of teaching the client how to be a better client. A classic of the experiential approach.

Grof, Stanislav (1985) Beyond the brain: Birth, death and transcendence in psychotherapy New York, SUNY Press. Not only about LSD psychotherapy, which took us so much deeper into the unconscious, but also about the new approach of holotropic therapy, which does not use drugs at all. A full account of the four basic perinatal matrices and the COEX system.

Mindell, Arnold (1985) Working with the dreaming body London, RKP. A delightful book written by a Jungian who takes the body seriously, and takes up a process viewpoint. Well-written and insightful, quite inspiring for the therapist who wants to be all there in the therapy process.

Rowan, John (1983) The reality game: A guide to humanistic counselling and therapy London, RKP. A general text for the aspiring practitioner, also containing a number of useful addresses. Rowan, John & Dryden, Windy (eds)(1988) Innovative therapy in Britain London, Harper & Row. Has chapters on primal integration, feminist therapy, encounter, psychodrama, co-counselling, biosynthesis, bioenergetics, biodynamic therapy, psychosynthesis, transpersonal psychotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, plus introduction and conclusion, index.

Shaffer, J B P & Galinsky, M D (1989) Models of group therapy (2nd ed) Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall. Simply the best academic book on groups. Takes twelve kinds of group, and gives for each a set of key concepts, a section on the role of the leader, usually an extract from a typical group session. Few academic books give an accurate account of the encounter group: this is one of them.

Shorr, Joseph E (1983) Psychotherapy through imagery (2nd ed) New York, Thieme-Stratton. This is really two books in one: Psycho- Imagination Therapy (1972); and Psychotherapy Through Imagery (1974). It is an extremely useful book for anyone using imagery techniques of any kind, and gives many extracts from therapy sessions, some with running commentaries. A stimulating eye-opener.

Walkenstein, Eileen (1975) Shrunk to fit London, Coventure. Written by a senior psychiatrist, this book starts off uncompromisingly with a chapter entitled "Human beings can't be diagnosed", and continues on from there. Truly humanistic, literate, covering many issues which arise in therapy, and giving many examples of how the author deals with them.

EXPERIENTIAL GROUPS: BASIC PRACTICE

1. Awareness of the body - Your body is you. It expresses your feelings, if you will let it. You can learn how you feel by going into your own body and noticing what you find there. If you suppress your own body, you will probably be willing to suppress other people - and they may pick this up. In groups like this we often get rid of chairs and tables so that interaction may take place physically as well as verbally.
2. The here and now. Talk about what you are aware of in this group at this moment. If you want to talk about the past, or about events outside the group, find ways of making them present to the group members. This can often be done by action or role-playing.
3. Feelings. Let reality have an emotional impact on you, especially the reality of the other group members. Let yourself feel various emotions - but if they are blocked, be aware of that too. Feel what it is like to experience whatever is happening at an emotional level.
4. [Figure 2 - coming soon] Be open about your feelings or lack of them. Let people into your world. If you are anxious, let people know about it; if you are bored, it is OK to say so. Be as honest as you can bear to.
5. Taking responsibility. Take responsibility for yourself - do what you want and need to do, not what you think the group wants you to do. If the leader suggests something, it is still your decision whether to go along with it. Be aware of what you are doing to other people by what you say and do, and take responsibility for that. Be aware of the "I and thou" in each statement. You are not an impartial observer.
6. Risk taking. If you are torn between expressing something and not expressing it, try taking a risk. Doing the thing you are most afraid of is usually a good idea in this group. You can reduce the danger of hostile statements by saying them non-evaluatively: instead of saying "You are a cold person", say "I feel frozen when you talk like that". This is more likely to be true, and it makes you more real to the others.
7. Listening. Listening to others lets us in to their worlds. But listening is not just about words - it means being aware of expressions, gestures, body positions, breathing. Allow intuition. Really be there with the other people in the group.
8. Bridging distances. As relationships in the group become clearer, there may be one or two members you feel very distant from - or want to be distant from. By expressing this, a quite new kind of relationship may begin to appear. Opposition and distance are just as likely to lead to growth as closeness and support.
9. Distress. When someone in the group is distressed, encourage them to stay with that feeling until the distress is fully worked through, or turns into some other emotion. There is a "Red Cross nurse" in all of us who wants to stop people feeling distressed, and usually jumps in too soon. A person learns most by staying with the feeling, and going with it to its natural end, which is often a very good place.
10. Support and confrontation. It is good to support someone who is doing some self-disclosure, some risk taking, some bridging of distances. It is good to confront someone who is not being honest, who is avoiding all risk-taking, who is diverting energy away from the group's real work. It is possible to do both these things with love and care.
11. Avoidance. Don't ask questions - make the statement which lies behind the question. Address people directly, saying "I" rather than "it" or "you". Don't say "I feel" when you mean "I think". Ask yourself - "What am I avoiding at this moment?"
12. The saver. Don't take any of these rules too seriously. Any set of rules can be used to put someone down - perhaps yourself.

Previous      Table of Contents      Next