ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how H.-G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics has an equal and compelling relevance to group analysis. Several group analytic concepts seem compatible with the idea of horizon. Therapists work and interpret within a variety of horizons—personal, professional, and cultural. Such horizons are necessarily perspectival and, therapists are profoundly affected by the “pre-understandings” of their trainings. Group analysis is characterised by the serious work and play of articulation, of group dialogue in which all participants are inevitably affected by the realities of addressing and answering. Group health is characterised by ever more richly populated horizons, which contain an expanding field of possible experience, moving patients beyond what is present and familiar. Central assumptions governing Sheila’s and Andrea’s respective psychic lives, constituting horizons of experience, were modified as a result of group analysis. Group health is characterised by ever more richly populated horizons, which contain an expanding field of possible experience, moving patients beyond what is present and familiar.
