Abstract
This article examines the century-long pairing of international wars followed by periods of resurgent interest in group psychotherapy and community-based treatment. It then focuses on the evolution of group and community treatment models, drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud, Trigant Burrow, Wilfred Bion, S. H. Foulkes, and Eric Berne to explore and illustrate the societal functions and difficulties of living and working in groups. The author offers his personal reflections on working with groups and concludes with a discussion of how group analytic models can extend the traditional models of transactional analysis group treatment to enhance the capacity of members to work with conflict, difference, and unconscious projections.
Keywords:group psychotherapy, group analysis, transactional analysis, Freud, Burrow, Bion, Foulkes, Berne, war, community