ABSTRACT
Group analysts observe and capture responses to change in metaphors, using words that can contain and hold what is felt and experienced. The group learns through group analysis to relocate the problems of change management in the matrix of the whole organisation. The 1990 and 1993 GP Contracts imposed an additional burden on primary care teams without achieving the objective of markedly increasing the amount of effective health promotion work in primary care. At an unconscious level the group dynamic within a primary healthcare team (PHCT) was, at that time, dominated by the fear of losing the NHS and one’s own livelihood and change was experienced as a form of persecution, a threat of annihilation. The NHS executive and the political reformers need to learn that the capacity of any individual or group to process change is limited.
