ABSTRACT
Let us now look at the use of personi®cation in group work. The most common type of group to be found on training courses is the
experiential training group, often called a personal growth or development group. Personal growth is a term coming from humanistic psychology (Rowan 2001). This approach includes person-centred therapy, Gestalt therapy, psychodrama, bioenergetics, focusing, experiential therapy, existential analysis and some of the feminist methods (Ernst & Goodison 1981). In this context, growth strictly means development in terms of the Maslow (1987) theory of a hierarchy of needs. This says that we all start off with physiological needs. When these are satis®ed, we move on to safety needs, involving basic trust. When these are satis®ed, we can move on to the higher levels as we grow up, for example learning our roles so as to be good conformists. As Kohlberg (1981) showed through his research, we can then continue growing, moving from the conventional to the postconventional forms of consciousness. Psychodynamic therapists used to avoid the term ``personal growth'' but in recent years many of them have adopted it. Of course they do not mean by it what Maslow meant, but something more like working through their issues: though of course Jung independently pursued the idea under the heading of Individuation. ``The process of individuation is a circumambulation of the self as the centre of the personality which thereby becomes uni®ed'' (Samuels, Shorter & Plaut 1986, p.76). This means working through the hangups of the persona and the distractions of the Shadow and other archetypes. The paradox of working through multiplicity to gain unity is very common in Jungian thinking, and personi®cation is very useful in working with archetypes and complexes.
