Group Analysis and Psychodynamic Group Therapy with Children and Adolescents (eBook)

Creative, Innovative, and Practical Inspiration

Katrin Stumptner (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
314 Seiten
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht (Verlag)
978-3-647-99277-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Children are born into a social context that is not of their choosing. From early childhood, this context is made up of diverse group experiences that play a crucial role in shaping a person's social life and desire to learn. This makes the group context an ideal setting for therapeutic and educational work, especially with children and adolescents. This volume offers numerous practical suggestions for using the group as a helpful and supportive medium, e.g., in parent-infant/toddler groups, parent/caregiver groups, groups with children or adolescents, and in preventive group work in schools. The contributions provide insights into the diversity and complexity of conceptual, group analytic work with children's, youth and parents' groups, and show how this work can be successful in outpatient settings, clinics, youth services, counseling centers, or schools. The combination of basic and applied knowledge makes this anthology an indispensable reference for any practitioner. With contributions by Andreas Opitz, Anke Mühle, Birgitt Ballhausen-Scharf, Dietrich Winzer, Hans Georg Lehle, Christoph Müller, Beate Schnabel, Anja Khalil, Carla Weber, Christoph Radaj, Dietlind, Köhncke, Franziska Schöpfer, Furi Kharbirpour, Gerhild Ohrnberger, Harald Weilnböck, Horst Wenzel, Kadir Kaynak, Matthias Wenck, Thomas Schneider, Tilman Sprondel, Ursula Pröbsting.

Textauszug

Editorial

Katrin Stumptner

1 The WE in the ME – the ME in the WE

“To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.”

(Maria Montessori, 1870–1952)

This book invites you to take a walk through landscapes of group analysis with children and adolescents (GACA). Twenty-two colleagues will introduce you to the pedagogical-interdisciplinary and psychodynamic fields of group analysis with children and adolescents, with the 18 contributions offering insights into the theoretical, professional, and conceptual work of GACA. The colleagues present their practical work in various institutional contexts and in outpatient practice. This book is intended to help emphasize the crucial importance of the social space that is the group in work with children, adolescents, and their caregivers, who are either parents or other significant persons in a caring role, such as foster parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, siblings, guardians, etc.

2 GACA turns 18

The conceptual development of group analysis with children, adolescents, and caregivers, as it is practiced in the German-speaking world today, can be understood as a complex transgenerational process from its beginning in 2003 until the present (Stumptner, 2019). Four group analysts from different institutes met in 2003 with the idea of bringing together colleagues working in groups with children and adolescents, and in 2005 these four1 established a workshop that still takes place annually in September. Subsequently, a group of committed colleagues2 came together to work on an extension of group analysis on an ongoing basis from 2006 onwards. The members of this working group came from different institutional cultures of group analysis, and in a long-term process they developed a common theory and practice of group analysis with children and adolescents and their caregivers, drawing on their diversity of perspectives. In 2016 they established the Working Group for Group Analysis with Children and Adolescents (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Gruppenanalyse mit Kindern und Jugendlichen e. V., abbreviated in German to GaKiJu).

In the German-speaking world, GACA has gone through many evolutionary processes in its conceptual development with ongoing effort towards a lived diversity. We have the protagonists to thank for “essential developmental steps towards an independent profession and theory formation alongside [and in connection with; K. S.] group analysis with adults” (Schneider, 2021, p. 16). In the meantime, GACA has become known in the international group-analytic space: in 2017 at the international symposium of the Group Analytic Society International (GASi) in Berlin, and in 2021 at the first international workshop of the GaKiJu working group, also in Berlin.

For this 16th workshop, the revised edition (by Ballhausen-Scharf, Lehle, Müller, Winzer) of the Guide to Competence Development in GACA was published (Leitfaden zur Kompetenzentwicklung in der GaKiJu, Arbeitsgemeinschaft GaKiJu, 2021). In the first contribution in the book – “Group-analytic work with children and adolescents. Insights into an unusual kind of further training” – Birgitt Ballhausen-Scharf, Christoph F. Müller, Hans Georg Lehle, and Dietrich Winzer provide a condensed summary and give insights into this revised edition of the Guide (curriculum) to Competence Development in GACA.

There is growing interest in professional exchange regarding GACA. In terms of professional policy, psychodynamic group therapy is anchored in the German health care system and has been included in the new professional development regulations as a mandatory component of ongoing training for child and adolescent psychotherapists and specialists in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy. In his contribution “Can cooperation models help to integrate psychodynamic group therapy with children and adolescents into institutional further training?”, Thomas Schneider discusses the integration of psychodynamic group therapy in the current, professionally complex process of change in further training guidelines from a personal point of view.

3 The group and mental health

Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, the existential importance of the group as an important social learning and development space for children and adolescents has increasingly penetrated the awareness of those responsible in politics, culture, and society. Dealing with the phenomenon of the group in its social dimension more comprehensively and penetrating more of the complex interrelationships and the manifold dynamic effective factors are crucially important for group-analytic work with children, adolescents, and caregivers. People interact, move, and engage continuously in and between small, medium, and large groups, and within these “we” spaces they continuously form a sense of the ego feeling, thinking, and acting. According to Werner Knauss, “every human interaction can be understood on an unconscious level as a group interaction” (Knauss, 2006, p. 50). Inner conceptions of oneself as a member of a group, a society, are formed by early internalized relational and interactional experiences within the small group of the family and are supplemented, expanded, confirmed, and modified by further cultural-social experiences in communities such as kindergarten, kibbutz, school, village community, sports club, refugee camp, home, boarding school, asylum-seeker housing, etc. Basic experiences in the relational network of the family matrices3 form the internalized field of tension, the dynamic matrix of predominantly unconscious experiences, in which the ego in the “we” continuously evolves and attempts to give its own meaning to life as a member of communities.

“Mental health”, says the World Health Organization, “should be seen as a valued source of human capital or well-being in society. We all need good mental health to thrive, to care for ourselves, and to interact with others, so it is important not only to address the needs of people with defined mental disorders, but also to protect and promote the mental health of all people and to recognize its inherent value. Mental health and well-being are influenced not only by individual characteristics, but also by the social circumstances in which people find themselves and the environments in which they live. These determinants interact dynamically and can threaten or protect a person’s mental state” (WHO, 2019).

The WHO’s wording makes it clear that “mental health” is not a matter of course, but an important prerequisite and “source” for well-being and self-care in the responsible coexistence of a society. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we experienced what it means to be asked to limit our contacts in order to protect each other. This radical restriction in social togetherness provokes in various ways the need of us humans for connection, communication, and emotional exchange. The “mental health” of everyone in society, as a “source of well-being,” is being put to the test in this pandemic, with children and adolescents particularly affected here. They find themselves constantly under attack in their sensitive developmental phases and needs due to the limitations on social contact.

Irrespective of the current pandemic situation, it is the responsibility of adults to create suitable framework conditions in the private and public-social environment in order to fulfill the duty of care for younger generations. Such framework conditions should be designed with the involvement of children and adolescents according to their age-related needs, “because they are the most important stakeholder group for decision-making processes and action concepts that affect their health and future” (WHO, 2020). It would be desirable to focus socio-political awareness more on “public spirit, that is, community spirit” (Foulkes, 1978, p. 28), “insofar as the attempt at resolution involves all those who are actually involved anyway,” namely all people – children, adolescents, and adults.

4 Some of the ideas underpinning GACA

Children and adolescents are always looking for spaces of action in which they can engage in the confrontations necessary for their psychosexual development and share experiences with each other according to their age and psychological makeup. In this regard, cultural diversity influences and shapes their developing sense of self and ability to imagine possible roles in society. In the Western world, the emphasis is on individual development toward autonomy and self-reflection, and the focus is on discussion within the parent-child relationship. A notable aspect here is that social relationships and experiences at the sibling level and in peer groups are still given less attention in individual development. Yet these experiences play a significant role in overcoming developmental crises, acquiring social skills, and in the desire to communicate, become independent, engage, and participate. These levels are effective dynamic factors in pedagogical as well as therapeutic-group-analytical work with children and adolescents.

Group-analytical work with children and adolescents in both the pedagogical and the therapeutic context covers the entire range, from infancy to young adulthood. In GACA, caregivers are included in the dynamic work process according to the psychosexual...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.8.2024
• Verlagsort: Göttingen
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Psychiatrie / Psychotherapie
• Schlagworte: adolescents • Childhood • children • Group Analysis • group analytic work • group experiences • group therapy with children ans adolescents • group work • psychodynamic group therapy • psychotherapy • therapeutic work
• ISBN-10: 3-647-99277-1 / 3647992771
• ISBN-13: 978-3-647-99277-8 / 9783647992778