An exploration of members’ experiences of group therapy: an interpretive phenomenological analysis

Abstract

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.