Relational Psychoanalytic Sessions as Large Group Therapy with Two Representatives: Theoretical and Technical Issues of the “Group Turn” in Relational Psychoanalytic Thinking

Abstract

This paper offers theoretical formulations and technical considerations in the hope of facilitating a “group turn” in the relational psychoanalytic field. My approach, respecting relational foundations, extends them through the group lens. More specifically, I view relational psychoanalytic sessions as a “large group” process with two multi-objectified/subjectified representatives, the analyst and the analysand, interacting in a multilayered world of group attachments. I suggest that the dynamics and difficulties of certain types of patients can be understood further and more fully as multiple objects/subjects in this expanded model. In particular, patients with intergenerational traumas and/or accumulated traumatic attachments, patients who come from extended families, and patients with multiethnic identities can be helped with a “large group” perspective.

Keywords:

• analytic third
• group turn theory
• intergenerational trauma
• large group
• relational psychoanalysis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stavros Charalambides

Stavros Charalambides, CGP, MSc, is Director of the Greek Institute for Relational and Group Psychotherapy in Athens, Greece, which he founded in 2016, and where he is a training analyst and supervisor as well as a group psychotherapist. He has been a member of the IARPP Board of Directors since 2018, and co-chairs the IARPP special interest group for Couples, Families, and Groups, with Gila Ofer. He is a director and founder of four different programs for relational psychoanalysis and group psychotherapy in Greece. His latest book, The Envy Executioner, was published in Greek by Disigma Publications, in 2022. He edited the first collective book in Greek of relational psychoanalysis and group dynamics, also published by Disigma Publications in 2023. He writes and presents extensively on sibling dynamics, envy, mourning and hatred in the transference and countertransference, in the analytic dyad and analytic groups; in the family; in organizations and institutions; and groups of all sizes.