This article explores the impact of colonial and heteronormative trauma on the group analytic process, introducing the concepts of Mega Cultural Containers, the erasure of the Indigenous Father and the Metaphorical Melanised Psychic Skin to conceptualise how racialised and queer subjects navigate inherited psychic wounds. Drawing on decolonial, psychoanalytic, queer, and group analytic frameworks, the paper examines how the symbolic erasure of the Indigenous and Black father—and the colonial disruption of kinship and gender structures—fractures not only cultural systems but also the foundational psychic matrices that sustain identity, attachment, and symbolic function. Colonial violence is theorised as a disturbance of the group matrix itself: the shared field through which unconscious processes are held and meaning is co-created. Racialised and queer group members often carry the projected contents of the group’s unprocessed anxieties around race, gender, and sexuality, appearing in the group field through scapegoating, enactments, and splitting—particularly in relation to trans and non-normative embodiments. The violent disruption of Mega Cultural results in a diminished symbolic capacity and a weakening of psychic skin. In response, the Melanised Psychic Skin is introduced as a defensive and adaptive psychic structure developed by racialised and queer individuals to metabolise racialised and homophobic projections within the social unconscious. Clinical vignettes illustrate how these dynamics emerge in the group setting, challenging the conductor to recognise them not as individual pathology, but as expressions of a traumatised matrix. This demands an attuned, theoretically informed, and intersubjectively engaged response. The paper advocates for a decolonising group analytic practice that affirms identity without reification, holds fluidity alongside belonging, and fosters collective reparation through symbolic witnessing, containment, and co-creation within the analytic matrix.
In addition to introducing the Literature Review Family, the narrative literature review is described in detail. How to conduct literature reviews in group analysis and in group analytic dissertations is outlined by providing practical examples and guidance. Generative Artificial Intelligence is briefly touched on. Possible reasons for the paucity of narrative literature reviews in group analysis and its consequences are given. Areas that could be explored further are suggested.
After the Second World War, Kurt Lewin’s concept of the social field was fundamental to building a theoretical framework for analytic group practices. This lecture introduces Pichon-Rivière’s concept of ‘dialectic spiral’, which describes a continuous movement between the inner and outer world of persons and their contexts in psychoanalytic and analytic group techniques. This process is conceived as a spiralling multidimensional field where progressions and regressions promote insight and new understandings, but also resistance, blind spots and paralysis in the sessions. This dynamic interplay will be discussed in connection with group analytic groups. In contemporary group analysis, the concept of matrix evolved, being extended and reconfigured in tripartite matrices. This development allowed us to explore the multiple figurations that interweave foundation, dynamic, and personal matrices in small, median and large group analytic groups. The new dimensionality proposed by the study of tripartite matrices brought to the fore new possibilities for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialogue, this time through cross-fertilisation with field theories, ranging from Lewin’s social fields to Pichon-Rivière’s ‘dialectic spiral’ processes, to classic and contemporary field theory in psychoanalysis.
This article examines how colonial histories and linguistic hierarchies are reproduced within the analytic matrix across five contexts: Albania, Aotearoa New Zealand, Ireland, Mexico, and South Africa. Drawing on chapters from Group Analysis Across Borders: Dialogues on History, Culture and Transformation (Harte, 2026), I argue that colonialism remains an active force shaping speech, silence, and relational life in analytic groups. Engaging Fanon’s reflections on language and decolonization, Martín-Baró’s liberation psychology, and the group-analytic traditions of Foulkes and de Maré, the article traces how trauma, repression, mistranslation, and inherited silences circulate in contemporary practice. Across these settings, analytic groups become spaces where historical injuries resurface and where speech and memory may be cautiously reclaimed. I conclude by considering the dominance of English — including in my own editorial work — as a persistent colonial inheritance that influences who may speak, how, and at what cost. The article argues for an anti-colonial group-analytic practice committed to linguistic plurality and to sustaining multiple symbolic worlds.
Power and hierarchy are inevitable phenomena in group therapy, manifesting in speech patterns, leadership dynamics, and social positioning. Despite this, they often remain under-examined in the therapeutic process. This article explores how group analysts can productively employ these dynamics within the context of contemporary, inclusive, and digital group practice. An integrative framework of four perspectives—psychodynamic (resistance and transference), group-analytic (power in the matrix), social-psychological (power versus status), and intersectional (internalization of societal inequality)—is presented to analyse the complex workings of power. While hierarchies can offer containment and stability, power becomes problematic when it compromises the sense of therapeutic safety or autonomy. Furthermore, the digitalization of therapy introduces new dimensions of power, driven by technological competence and virtual presence. Using clinical vignettes, intervention strategies are outlined to make power relations visible, explore ambivalence, and set boundaries. In this process, the role of the conductor shifts from managing dynamics to facilitating the use of power as a transformational potential. In conclusion, this article argues that recognizing and channelling power dynamics transforms the group into a practice space for developing more democratic relational patterns, whereby potential obstacles are converted into opportunities for connection and change.
This article introduces Frantz Fanon as a vital contributor to a socially-grounded, anti-racist and social justice-oriented group analytic practice now. Fanon eloquently described how, even as they are structural and historical, racist and colonial dynamics are subjectively experienced, within the body, within the muscles, as a ‘nervous condition’ (Fanon, 1970: 8), albeit being externally caused by processes of objectification and dehumanization, or what (in the context of racialization) he called ‘epidermalization’. He wrote, vividly, of subjective states of zombification and petrification highlighting the mental debilitation, as well as sense of excision from the body, produced by racism. Hence Fanon recognized how distress was caused by oppression and, while his primary concern was with racialized oppression, his analysis can be extended, especially when read intersectionally, to engage class, gender, sexuality (for example) as engaging with race and racialization in mutually constitutive ways (Nayak, 2021; Paré, 2025). Increasingly recognized for his phenomenological contributions, Fanon was both a vehement critic of mainstream (colonial) psychiatry and an advocate for reforming and transforming mental health practice. He understood madness as alienation; that is, a neurotic or traumatic response to oppression and dehumanization, such that the key task was not only restoring social bonds but collective socio-political transformation for individual liberation. Three key examples from Fanon’s clinical papers are discussed to highlight what group analysts can learn from his analysis of the intersectionally gendered and racialized dynamics of assessment; how colonialism is played out within the doctor-patient relationship, and, third, how the colonial contract structures institutional settings, so setting up impossible double binds for the colonized or racialized subject who can only emerge as deficient, inferiorized or silenced. As well as highlighting compatibility with the best of group analytic and democratic therapeutic community models, some alignments with feminist and other self-advocacy mental health movements are noted.
Donald Winnicott analysed the fundamental function of play in the growth and development of the individual, and the Rabindranath Tagore poem he cites is a delightful depiction of childhood play and its corresponding adult reality. This paper will explore the role of play in social life, the development of interpersonal relationships, and psychotherapy or training. Reference will be made to Winnicott’s work, and to what biology — particularly the neurobiology of the mind — can shed light on.
This article explores the integration of Viktor Frankl’s (1988) concept of logos, the existential pursuit of meaning, with Frantz Fanon’s (1963) theory of actionality to propose a new framework for group therapy under conditions of colonial violence. Drawing on Palestinian therapeutic praxis, the article critiques the limitations of western psychiatric models that pathologize trauma responses in colonized contexts. Instead, it introduces Liberation Madness as a psychopolitical construct that reframes rupture as a necessary, meaning-driven refusal of subjugation. Using a clinical vignette from a women’s therapy group in a West Bank refugee camp, the paper illustrates how group work can support the emergence of decolonial consciousness through collective witnessing, meaning-making, and the cultivation of an insurgent stance. By aligning interior freedom (Frankl) with historically grounded resistance (Fanon), the article positions group therapy not as a space of adjustment, but as a crucible for re-humanization and collective becoming in contexts of protracted occupation and systemic violence.
This article tries to flesh out an intuition: that psychotherapy (group or individual) is better thought of as a kind of soul-seeking and soul-making (Keats), rather than the more usual description of ‘treatment’. It is the mortal, perishable soul that is being spoken of. I will call on Ian Suttie, Raimond Gaita and Martin Buber, to argue that the values of ‘analysis’ — neutrality and detachment — has the potential to subvert the therapeutic project. I will argue that the therapeutic encounter takes place in the realm of I-Thou, and this necessitates the therapist to be engaged (rather than detached), transparent (rather than opaque) and responsive (rather than impassive). But because such moments are rare and cannot be bidden, the ethos of I-Thou signals a direction of travel rather than a place of arrival. I conclude that what is required is a reconfiguration of the relationship between one-who-tries-to-help and the ones-who-come-for-help.
Meta-analysis is a statistical technique used to synthesize findings from multiple studies, providing a comprehensive understanding of a given research question. This paper explores the fundamental principles of meta-analysis, including its methodology, advantages, and challenges. It discusses key steps such as study selection, data extraction, effect size calculation, and statistical modelling. Additionally, issues related to heterogeneity, publication bias, and the reliability of results are examined. By systematically integrating data from various sources, meta-analysis enhances the validity and generalizability of research findings, making it a valuable tool in evidence-based decision-making. However, methodological limitations and biases must be carefully managed to ensure robust conclusions. This paper aims to provide a clear overview of meta-analysis for researchers and practitioners, highlighting its significance and best practices in various scientific disciplines.
This paper describes a teaching experience from the course ‘Theories and Methods of Observation in Groups’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. After a historical and epistemological framing of the construct ‘participant observation’, the critical aspects of the relationship between observer, conductor, group and institution are explored. Numerous theoretical insights support the description of the peculiarities of the field experience, the important ‘reworking’ time in the classroom, and the observational grid is proposed as a support tool for the observation. A contribution produced by some of the trainees on their experiences during the course supplements the study.
This paper traces Fanon’s radical insights within South African intellectual traditions, exploring how thinkers like Biko and Manganyi reinterpreted Fanonian praxis into local embodied practice. Through collaborative writing and fieldwork, we examine how Fanon’s legacy continues as dialogue shaping liberatory group analytic practice. We highlight generational transmission through oral histories, healing practices, and political consciousness movements, reflecting the social unconscious in culture. These embodied responses (rituals, storytelling, and collective mourning) emerged as acts of resistance and healing, aligning with group analytic principles while offering local expressions of communal well-being. Biko and Manganyi translated Fanonian thought into a South African aligned with Ubuntu ethics, informing our approach to the collectively experienced social unconscious. We demonstrate practice operating from epistemic confidence, neither marginal nor derivative but self-authorised. This paper invites practitioners to listen beyond theory to rhythms, rituals, and relational wisdom in everyday life as foundational to an emancipatory group analytic practice.
Between April 1952 and October 1953, François Tosquelles and Frantz Fanon jointly organized nurse training at the Saint-Alban Hospital in Lozère, in southern France. This practice of group training had been inaugurated by Tosquelles during the Nazi occupation in the Second World War in the same hospital, and even earlier in Catalonia, when he led a six-month seminar based on Jacques Lacan’s 1932 thesis on paranoia to train therapeutic teams at the Pere Mata Institute in Reus. Group training was combined with practical reflection on the self-organization of patients through clubs, workshops, and cooperatives, as well as with the ‘transferential constellation’ and ‘scattered transference’ developed between the different collectives. This article recounts another genealogy of collective practices in institutional psychotherapy, which gives prominence to women such as psychiatrist Agnès Masson. It also focuses on the role of reading and literature in working with groups in the hospital when, during the 1970 and 1980, Tosquelles promoted discussion and reading groups, with texts by Gabriel Ferrater, Roman Jakobson and Charles Baudelaire, which made possible another circulation of the word and meaning within the psychiatric institution.
This paper uses Foulkes’ theories of the social nature of the individual and Elias’ theories of symbols, power, and ideology to explore how neoliberal ideology manifests in contemporary mental health systems. Using clinical and organizational examples, this paper aims to understand how neoliberalism shapes the professional and patient identities that exist within mental health services in the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom (UK). With an emphasis on contemporary psychiatry and psychology, this paper will highlight the implications of neoliberal ideology in relation to how psychopathology and psychotherapy are perceived, constructed, and clinically implemented. Finally, this paper suggests how group analytic principles may be used to counter neoliberal violence.
This introduction to ‘Fanon and group analysis now’ argues that group analytic responses to decolonizing group analysis fold into at least five themes that coalesce into Fanon’s theorization of alienation and the impossible encounter in any colonial situation. The analyses and global applications within ‘Fanon and group analysis now’ go beyond the question of can group analysis allow outsider ideas in? To ask will group analysis let collectives, cooperatives, and community and activist groups in? and will group analysis let rituals, traditions, belief systems, and spirituality in? These questions are about the extent to which the Institute of Group Analysis will extend its conceptualization of what constitutes an analytic group? In the conclusion, Fanon’s pedagogy of failure is applied to show a paradox — the same group analysts who know that getting it wrong is necessary for therapeutic transformation are among the same group analysts who fear getting it wrong when it comes to decolonizing group analysis. Fanon’s pedagogy of failure is a crucial part of decolonizing. The interventions within ‘Fanon and group analysis now’ provide an unequivocal evidence base for how and why Fanon is needed now for decolonizing group analysis.
This response to the papers published in this special edition calls on Fanon to highlight some of the pitfalls that decolonization can fall into.
The doctor and anticolonial revolutionary Frantz Fanon trained in and radicalized a 20th-century clinical tradition known as institutional psychotherapy. Building on the idea of the ‘transferential constellation’, Fanon proposed that clinical work required shared world-building between patients and doctors. When this work was undertaken in profoundly politically and racially alienated contexts, like that of French Colonial Algeria, the boundaries between clinical and political transformation came ever more into question. Building on the recent translation of a new spate of Fanon’s clinical writings into English, this short paper maps the contours of Fanon’s technique, charts several productive failures in his clinical career, and narrates the changes in his practice as he joined the Algerian anticolonial struggle. In this, it suggests points of overlap and friction with other 20th-century clinical traditions focused on the group and collective, including group analysis.
