Human Group Matrix. How To Predict What Will Happen Next?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Once upon a time (even before my professional practice as a psychoanalyst) I wrote the communication game Kingdom. And I played it with different people, acquaintances and new ones. It was amazing that groups with different histories, motives for why we play, different levels of knowledge about the game and each other played the same way. The game created conflict and invited trickery. Different people built similar sequences of moves and played the same basic roles.

Then I was convinced. The group will always (and if desired, and without) will live according to certain patterns. You just need to know what to look at. Sociologists and group therapists who study the issue tell us the same.

The group will always show the matrix. Introduce new people there, change the conditions or the observer - the matrix remains. Below I will write the nine main points of which it consists. This is my free reworking of the ideas of Sigmund Fuchs.

What does the group matrix give someone who is looking for help, understanding, support and improvement in the quality of their life? - At least hope. That your personal manifestations in the group can be accepted, understood and explained. And, therefore, change to more comfortable and successful ones. And even - to heal a small community. And much more is possible.

So. What to look at while the band is living their life? And what to expect next?

1. Balance of separateness (isolation) and inclusion (unity) with the group. It is the balance

For example. If a person brings to the group some of his own inadequacy, discomfort for others, then the group will begin to reject such a participant (actively or passively), as a result of which he will become even more inadequate and uncomfortable for the group. There is a repetition of the same thing with increased discomfort for everyone.

This will continue until the idea is born in the group that it is necessary to change not only the individual (become more adequate), but also the group - to become more understanding, more experienced and tolerant.

That is, until everyone begins to change - condemnation (isolation) and even the expulsion of individual participants are useless.

2. Stops thinking in participants. Where do they lead?

For example. The group discusses their events animatedly. Suddenly one of the participants tells a dream about a destroyed building. The group is heavily silent for a while. In the next session, someone talks about the fire in their backyard and the group goes quiet again. It can be assumed that the metaphor of destruction-fire is important and resourceful for the group. Even if the group ignores it and does not reflect, the metaphor will appear again and again, causing stupor and tension. What again will look like a stop and a vicious circle.

Until the group begins to think about it and generate new ideas that will change its perception of itself, the image will come and hang.

3. What do the participants reject as foreign?

The outcast shows what the participants do not want to know about themselves. It hurts to know. However, they feel and therefore react vividly to the rejected.

Returning projections leads to basic feelings of guilt, shame, and grief. Failure to return projections leads to anxiety and rejection. Guilt and grief is thus group development, and rejection is stagnation. And they usually alternate, sometimes softly, sometimes brighter.

4. The group always accumulates emotions. And then an insignificant event becomes the last straw

For example. The group discussed their news, it seemed that everyone was happy to see each other. Many said how they missed the group in between. Suddenly one of the participants said that she would not come next time. In the form of a chain reaction, many begin to make claims against the group and the leader, releasing accumulated negative feelings. The latter were before that. But there was no trigger for their awareness and expression.

After strong positive feelings, negative ones come, they will not go anywhere.

5. Participants repeat and will repeat one after another

For example. Someone began to talk about their ancestors and origins - others picked up. Thus, there is an opportunity to think and talk about what he himself would not have thought of thinking about. The band revives whole layers of our memory and emotions.

Repetition ensures the vitality of the group and its therapeutic effect.

In fact, this is the only thing that contains the learning potential of the group - the desire to repeat one after another.

6. The group will always move forward either towards understanding the problems. Or back to neurosis and regression

Any direction is helpful. And you should not speed up or slow down. This will not give anything, but will only confuse the situation without changing its evolution. Errors are useful if you do not rush to correct them (words of Sigmund Fuchs).

Regression is frightening only at first glance. And looking closely and with experience comes the understanding that regression is most useful when it comes to injuries.

7. All participants will analyze and will disassemble the group roles

Familiar and preferable for everyone. This allows you to play (live) familiar situations in a therapeutic setting. Realize automatisms and revise them. In individual therapy, this may not happen at all. And the group will work.

Roles can be something like this: silent, storyteller, comforter, complainant, lawyer, outsider, scapegoat, weakling-goof, cool-successful, leader, evil, kind, psychologist-mentor-guru, dunno, naive, comedian, sick, child, subordinate, dominant, provocateur, judge, historian-chronicler, etc.

Role assignment is an important socialization process. Without this, the group is impossible, it simply will not have connections. Even adherents of isolation and separateness, and "asocial aggressors" - will take their place in the group. And if the individual is removed (expelled), then his place will readily be taken by another who competed with him for this role.

Responsibility for assigning roles is both an individual and a group process at the same time. A group can be assigned to a role or removed from a role, and each member can either accept the role or refuse it, resist it or outgrow it.

This is all very therapeutic. Roles are a cornucopia for insights.

The prediction here is that the basic roles, dominant, dependent and helping will always be occupied by someone. Someone will definitely be an aggressor and a provocateur, someone will definitely be a victim, and someone will become a lawyer and a rescuer.

8. Fluctuations of rhythms. Activity and stagnation, optimism and pessimism, unity and disunity and others

This is the basic principle of any development. It will become destructive if the group lingers for a long time in one phase and stops striving for changes in activity and revision of itself. But such stops necessarily cause discomfort, it is transmitted to other less sensitive members and the group explodes with the desire to change something.

That is, the cycles have always been and will be. And they will either lead to the development of a new one, or to burial under the already familiar material. See also item 1.

9. How does stress or an abnormal personality change the group?

From both, the group becomes abnormal. And what will happen to a normal group that has become anomalous? There will be a redistribution of roles, new traits of each personality and new conflicts will enter the arena, a new cyclicality will appear.

For example. The group reached balance, but the members were a little tired of learning about connections with each other. A new member came, who recently divorced traumatically for himself and was very worried about his inferiority. The group at first plunged into general depression, a new state for itself, then actively began to help the participant, creating new roles and relationships within. All participants showed themselves from completely unfamiliar sides. It ended with a new phase in the development of the group, full of personal insights and new intragroup connections.

So. Here are nine focus points. By observing and researching you can guess what will happen next. And don't just prepare, but try to look at reps in a new way. Play a familiar game, slightly changing yourself. Confirming yourself and your abilities today is already a little stronger and wiser than before.

I invite those who wish to join my therapeutic group in Kiev (there are several of them recruited for October-November 2019). Find my contacts on the article publishing site and write to me. I answer all the questions.