Group Analysis June 1998 [antikvár]

Special Section Group Analysis with Children and Adolescents Guest Editor: James H. Bamber I hope this Special Section will help to compensate for what seems to have been a somewhat neglected area in the pages of Group Analysis, despite E.J. Anthony's lead in Group Psychotherapy (Anthony, 1965). In the journal's twenty-one years of publication I can find only three articles and one report of a scientific meeting which deal specifically with children and adolescents. Mary Goldberg and Susi Shafar {Group Analysis 1973, VI/1: 18-21) described group therapy in an approved school for girls; Elizabeth Schardt and Brian Truckle {Group Analysis 1975, VIII/3:166-9) wrote on a counselling group for adolescents; Margaret Farrell {Group Analysis 1984, XVII/2:146-55) recalled her eleven years of group therapy with children in a National Health Service psychiatric service, and Jason Maratos {Group Analysis 1981, XIV/1: 81-3) reported on a paper by Sabina Strich and Christopher Shields describing their experience with a group of latency boys who soil. Do group analysts shy away from work with children and adolescent groups or do they shy away from describing the work they do in this field? Psychotherapeutic groups consisting of children or adolescents are far from easy to handle when compared with the usual adult outpatient group. Goldberg and Shafar stated that: 'Whereas a group of psychiatric patients is mostly encouraged to inhibit intellectualization and to express feehng, here [in the adolescent group] one deliberately puts a brake on overt emotionalism especially when it becomes too disruptive '. They conceptualized the therapist of the adolescent group as a dustbin for accumulated dissatisfactions, a whipping boy, a source of sympathy and advice, an oracle and a target for torment. Farrell provided a very lucid description of the problem relating to limits: 'painting on the walls, throwing and dumping sand far and wide all over the room and at Group Analysis (SAGE, London, Newbury Park, Beverly Hills and New Delhi), Vol. 21 (1988), 99-102