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Group Analysis has No Theory! Foulkes Failed Us. Did He?

Olov Dahlin

IPA, Groupanalytic Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, o.dahlin{at}telia.com

In the form of an essay the author addresses the conditions of group analysis today from a metatheoretical point of view using Foulkes's dictum that every group is part and product of its context. Articles in recent issues of Group Analysis are used to show a dilemma in the development of group-analytic theory and practice. The author's thesis is that group analysis in consort with psychoanalysis, on which group analysis has come to feed, has been marginalized by market forces and has been allocated to the psychotherapeutic corner of the market, where its praxis and its theorizing have been pruned by the ruling medical discourse, leaving no space for the social dimension of group analysis. While group analysis has stuck to that horn of the dilemma, trapped in the psychotherapeutic corner, many group-analysis-like inceptions can be observed in, for example, social anthropology, business administration and the studies of organizations. Those inceptions cannot as a rule acknowledge any connection with group analysis. One must conceive of them as stemming from the same roots as group analysis but not dependent on group analysis. There is a risk that group analysis will be left astern. It is the author's opinion that Foulkes gave us little theory but very much in the form of praxis.

Key Words: context • critical theory • dilemma • Foulkes • group-analytic praxis • market forces

Group Analysis, Vol. 36, No. 3, 365-374 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/05333164030363008
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