ABSTRACT
In this article I would discuss one or two points about the small therapeutic group; let us consider the vicissitudes of an interpretation. If a psycho-analyst were to conduct a group by my method he would soon be impressed by the apparent futility of it; it seems impossible to achieve precision by interpretation, for even when the formulation of the interpretation is satisfying there seems small reason to suppose it reaches its destination. At first, in an attempt to counteract what I thought was some sort of resistance which patients were achieving through use of the group, I used to be beguiled into giving individual interpretations as in psychoanalysis. In doing this I was doing what patients often do—trying to get to individual treatment. True, I was trying to get to it as a doctor, but in fact this can be stated in terms of an attempt to get rid of the ‘badness’ of the group and, for the doctor, the ‘badness’ of the group is its apparent unsuitability as a therapeutic instrument—which is, as we have already seen, the complaint also of the patient. Ignoring those inherent qualities of the group which appear to give substance to the complaint, and choosing instead to regard this unsuitability as a function of the failure of the doctor or patient to use the group in a therapeutic way, we can see that the failure, at the moment when the analyst gives in to his impulse to make individual interpretations, lies in being 116 influenced by baD instead of interpreting it, for, as soon as I start to give supposedly psycho-analytic interpretations to an individual, I reinforce the assumption that the group consists of patients dependent on the doctor, which is the baD.
