Complexity explained: The dialectical position between theory and practice. Theoretical group analytic concepts and clinical examples

Abstract

I present below an attempt to understand complexity theory and the dialectical relationship between theory and group analytic practice. These are often concepts difficult to make sense of as they are rarely illuminated with clinical material for the reader or the trainee group analyst to comprehend. After the introduction of the Kantian and Hegelian dialectic and its use to understand group analytic concepts, I move on to the complexity theory and attempt to illustrate its significance with a clinical example from a small group analytic group. Cavafis’s celebrated poem ‘Ithaka’, is used as a metaphor for the utmost importance of the splendid interpersonal and transpersonal journey in group analysis with all its challenges and gains that this brings to the individual and to the group as a whole as the emphasis is on the process (journey) rather the destination (Ithaka).