Borrowing My Self: An Exploration of Exchange as a Group-Specific Therapeutic Factor

Abstract

Exchange, one of Foulkes’s four group-specific therapeutic factors, is a valuable if neglected concept in group-analytic literature, standing for the encounter with difference in the group. Groups’ multiple poles of difference allow individuals to experience and explore a range of possibilities hitherto unimagined. The clinical dimensions of exchange are explored through the metaphor of the mother/baby dyad; identity formation in a specific cultural context grounded in familial and group identifications are also touched upon. In the group these together allow for the creation, and recreation, of individual identity.