ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the main focus of supervisory groups for the entire ward staff is the development of a common language and mutual attunement between staff and patients. Sensitivity, support, or supervision groups to the entire, multi-disciplinary staff of psychiatric wards are a relatively common practice. Group analytic thinking believes that, at his core, man is a social being. He needs a group and a feeling of belonging in order to exist and to develop. The psychiatric ward may be conceptualised as a large group consisting of two main sub-groups—staff and patients. A main goal of the staff group is to expand the "common zone" of communication in the ward. T. H. Ogden conceives of the analytic supervisory experience as a form of "guided dreaming". The two clinical vignettes point to the centrality of power–weakness and inclusion–exclusion configurations in both patient groups and the ward as a whole.
