Operative Groups: The Latin-American Approach to Group Analysis

Group therapy and other dynamic approaches to the co-ordination of groups may focus either on the individual psychodynamics or on the group-as-a-whole. In Britain, group analysis developed as a group-centred approach of both therapeutic and non-therapeutic groups, from the foundational work of S.H. Foulkes. But there has been another, independent, Latin-American school of group analysis, which originated in Argentina as a result of the work and teachings of the Swiss born Argentine psychoanalyst Enrique Pichon-Rivière. This volume is a thorough introduction to operative groups. It starts by guiding the reader through the ideas of Pichon-Rivière, who conceived operative groups as a whole way of thinking and acting in groups, and then shows how the two schools of group analysis the British and the Latin-American coincide and inter-relate, shedding light on the theory behind both and including useful case material of various kinds of groups to illustrate such theory. This is the first book to be published in English that makes available the work of the Latin American school of group analysis. It will be a thought-provoking read for group analysts, psychotherapists and social scientists in all parts of the world, and for all therapists and analysts interested in developing the theoretical underpinning of their work.