%0 Journal Article
%T An exploration of members¡¯ experiences of group therapy: an interpretive phenomenological analysis
%A Anne-Marie Salm
%A Rachel O¡¯Beney
%A Tony Lavender
%J Group Analysis
%@ 1461-717X
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0533316418814054
%X NHS patients referred for group analytic psychotherapy often have limited capacity to manage their own or others¡¯ emotions and therefore struggle to use analytic group psychotherapy because its unstructured format can feel too anxiety provoking. This research looked into members¡¯ experiences of group analytic therapy, using a qualitative approach, to examine the experiences of group processes for members and their therapists. Phenomenological Interpretive Analysis was used to analyse the interview transcripts and develop over-arching themes. Findings revealed shared themes between members and therapists, describing strong feelings: ¡®anger; competition with members and disappointment with therapists¡¯ and ¡®fears of emotional damage¡¯. A super-ordinate theme of ¡®weathering¡¯ emerged, which connected to members being able to stay and understand these strong feelings and which led to themes of ¡®sharing leading to new learning¡¯ and ¡®change¡¯. Differences in themes were also found: ¡®anger could be destructive¡¯ and ¡®feeling attacked¡¯ were identified by members only, whilst therapists identified ¡®re-enactment: repair or re-traumatization¡¯. Members emphasized; ¡®therapists as parents providing safety¡¯ and ¡®support from other members¡¯ as crucial in helping them to stay to ¡®weather¡¯ the group process. The theme of ¡®weathering¡¯ was important because it related to all themes and provided an explanation for personal change in members. Clinical implications are discussed
%K weathering
%K overwhelming emotions
%K drop-out
%K therapeutic group analysis
%K mentalization
%K change
%K emotional damage
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0533316418814054