The Birth of Group Analysis from the Spirit of Theatre

Abstract

Foulkes had maintained that besides Trigant Burrow, plays by Gorki: At the Bottom (1902) and Pirandello: Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), had inspired him to group analysis 15 years before his first group in Exeter. An analysis of the plays under dramatic and group analytic perspectives tries to investigate the possible influential factors that might have inspired Foulkes. By expanding the neuroscientific and psychosocial ontological dimension of group analysis into the ontology of art, it is suggested that such an intuitive approach can be fruitful in understanding group processes, as is shown by a vignette of an adolescent group, opening up new dimensions for interrelational thinking and intersubjetivity.