Role suction is a term introduced in the United States by Fritz Redl in the mid-20th century to describe the power of a social group to allocate roles to its members.
W. R. Bion's group dynamics further explored the ways whereby the group (unconsciously) allocates particular functions to particular individuals in order to have its covert emotional needs met; [1] and the process has recently been highlighted anew within the systems-centered therapy of Yvonne Agazarian. [2]
Among regularly occurring group roles are those of the scapegoat for the group's troubles; the joker; the peacemaker; the critic/spokesperson for group standards; the idol, or upholder of the group ideal; and the identified patient. [3] In mixed gender groups, women may be disproportionately pressured by role suction into playing a nurturing/peacemaker role. [4]
The ease whereby people pick out those who play complementary games, [5] and the psychological splitting of good and bad help fuel such role differentiation. [6]
Behind role suction, such forces as projective identification and countertransference have been singled out as operating at an unconscious level in the group. [7]
Role lock – confirming mutual suction into complementary roles, such as victim and abuser – is ensured by the intermeshing of projective identifications. [8]
The British anti-psychiatrists explored the theme of group suction in connection with role attribution in the family nexus, [9] as well as with the allocations of roles in the wider social system, David Cooper suggesting that 'there are always good or bad, loved or hated 'mothers' and 'fathers', older or younger 'brothers' and 'sisters'...in any institutional structure”. [10]
A wider variety of roles can however be found in organizational life, the person-in-role acting as a container for the (unconscious) group forces. [11]
Bion has described his experience as a group therapist when he "feels he is being manipulated so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognize, in somebody else's phantasy...a temporary loss of insight, a sense of experiencing strong feelings, and at the same time a belief that their existence is quite adequately justified by the objective situation". [12] Bion's work has also been used to illustrate the part played by role suction in the selection of group leaders – dependent groups favouring narcissistic leaders, the fight/flight group paranoids. [13]
R. D. Laing considered that a central part of the therapist's job was "not to allow himself to collude with the patients in adopting a position in their phantasy-system: and, alternatively, not to use the patients to embody any phantasy of their own" [14] – to resist role suction. Later therapists however have explored how a measure of adaptation to patients' role suction – a degree of role responsiveness – can be a useful element in the therapeutic use of the countertransference. [15]
From the point of view of systems centered therapy, the debate relates to the interface between a personal system and the psycho-dynamics of social systems themselves. [16]
Debate has arisen about how far the group imposes roles, and how far the individual's own personality goes to meet the group halfway. Earl Hopper has used the term personification to challenge Redl's concept, suggesting instead that group roles reflect the underlying personality of the individual involved. [17] However, Kibel objects that in many cases the roles imposed are in fact ego-dystonic; [18] with others pointing to how personal tendencies combine with group expectations with varying degrees of fit. [19]
Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965.
Group psychotherapy or group therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which one or more therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group. The term can legitimately refer to any form of psychotherapy when delivered in a group format, including art therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy or interpersonal therapy, but it is usually applied to psychodynamic group therapy where the group context and group process is explicitly utilized as a mechanism of change by developing, exploring and examining interpersonal relationships within the group.
Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between external people, as well as internal images and the relations found in them. Thinkers of the school maintain that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of its personality in adult life. Particularly, attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self or the psychic organization that creates the sense of identity.
Countertransference, in psychotherapy, refers to a therapist's redirection of feelings towards a patient or becoming emotionally entangled with them. This concept is central to the understanding of therapeutic dynamics in psychotherapy.
Transference is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which repetitions of old feelings, attitudes, desires, or fantasies that someone displaces are subconsciously projected onto a here-and-now person. Traditionally, it had solely concerned feelings from a primary relationship during childhood.
Projective identification is a term introduced by Melanie Klein and then widely adopted in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Projective identification may be used as a type of defense, a means of communicating, a primitive form of relationship, or a route to psychological change; used for ridding the self of unwanted parts or for controlling the other's body and mind.
In psychology, a family nexus is a common viewpoint held and reinforced by the majority of family members regarding events in the family and relationships with the world. The term was coined by R. D. Laing, who believed that this nexus "exists only in so far as each person incarnates the nexus...maintaining his interiorization of the group unchanged".
Socio-analysis is the activity of exploration, consultancy, and action research which combines and synthesises methodologies and theories derived from psychoanalysis, group relations, social systems thinking, organisational behaviour, and social dreaming.
Harold Frederic Searles was one of the pioneers of psychiatric medicine specializing in psychoanalytic treatments of schizophrenia. Searles had the reputation of being a therapeutic virtuoso with difficult and borderline patients; and of being, in the words of Horacio Etchegoyen, president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, "not only a great analyst but also a sagacious observer and a creative and careful theoretician".
Resistance, in psychoanalysis, refers to the client's defence mechanisms that emerge from unconscious content coming to fruition through process. Resistance is the repression of unconscious drives from integration into conscious awareness.
Psychological resistance, also known as psychological resistance to change, is the phenomenon often encountered in clinical practice in which patients either directly or indirectly exhibit paradoxical opposing behaviors in presumably a clinically initiated push and pull of a change process. In other words, the concept of psychological resistance is that patients are likely to resist physician suggestions to change behavior or accept certain treatments regardless of whether that change will improve their condition. It impedes the development of authentic, reciprocally nurturing experiences in a clinical setting. Psychological resistance can manifest in various ways, such as denying the existence or severity of a problem, rationalizing or minimizing one's responsibility for it, rejecting or distrusting the therapist's or consultant's suggestions, withholding or distorting information, or sabotaging the treatment process. It is established that the common source of resistances and defenses is shame. This and similar negative attitudes may be the result of social stigmatization of a particular condition, such as psychological resistance towards insulin treatment of diabetes.
Yvonne M. Agazarian was the principal architect of systems-centered therapy, based on a theory of Living Human Systems that she also developed. Agazarian taught, trained, and supervised systems-centered therapists internationally, was the founder of the Systems-Centered Training & Research Institute, and practiced in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Systems-centered therapy (SCT) is a particular form of group therapy based on the Theory of Living Human Systems developed by Yvonne Agazarian. The theory postulates that living human systems survive, develop, and transform from simple to complex through discriminating and integrating information. Corresponding to the small and rigorously defined set of concepts, SCT defines a set of methods, techniques and instruments. SCT practitioners use these with individuals, couples and groups to explore the experience of their differences and work with these to integrate them. Using the method of functional subgrouping, these living human systems increase their ability to see both sides of their issues and resolve them productively. The theory was first developed in Agazarian's 1997 book, Systems-Centered Therapy for Groups, and grew out of her earlier work in group psychotherapy under the influence of such figures as W. R. Bion and John Bowlby through the further input of the general systems theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
Identified patient (IP) is a clinical term often used in family therapy discussion. It describes one family member in a dysfunctional family who is used as an expression of the family's authentic inner conflicts. As a family system is dynamic, the overt symptoms of an identified patient draw attention away from the "elephants in the living room no one can talk about" which need to be discussed. If covert abuse occurs between family members, the overt symptoms can draw attention away from the perpetrators.
Body-centred countertransference involves a psychotherapist's experiencing the physical state of the patient in a clinical context. Also known as somatic countertransference, it can incorporate the therapist's gut feelings, as well as changes to breathing, to heart rate and to tension in muscles.
Joseph J. Sandler was a British psychoanalyst within the Anna Freud Grouping – now the Contemporary Freudians – of the British Psychoanalytical Society; and is perhaps best known for what has been called his 'silent revolution' in re-aligning the concepts of the object relations school within the framework of ego psychology.
Self and Others is a psychological study by R. D. Laing, first published in 1961. It was re-issued in a second edition (1969), which was “extensively revised, without being changed in any fundamental way”.
Isabel Menzies Lyth born Isabel Edgar Punton (1917–2008) was a British psychoanalyst in the Kleinian tradition, known for her work on unconscious mechanisms in institutional settings.
Parallel process is a phenomenon noted in clinical supervision by therapist and supervisor, whereby the therapist recreates, or parallels, the client's problems by way of relating to the supervisor. The client's transference and the therapist's countertransference thus re-appear in the mirror of the therapist/supervisor relationship.
