ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to tease out the change-producing or transformative properties of the group-analytic experience as opposed to those that determine the direction of change, or its therapeutic properties. Group-analysts have no choice other than to accept the individual who presents himself to us as the focal or nodal point of the pathological system in which the functions essential to his existence converge. Depending on the stage of development and maturity of the existing group, there is a period in which the individual's presenting problem is accepted by the group, who indicate their acceptance by expressions of sympathy, advice and a certain amount of comparing and contrasting with their own Problems. Group-analysts first task as conductor is to enable the group to abandon the Problems in favour of the Non-Problem. The therapist's task is to enable every member of his group to become part of the alternative system that is the group's own.
