Te Rōpu te Ūkaipo

Learning From Experience

Abstract

I have been conducting a psychotherapy group since May 2007. We have met once a week, forty-six times a year, for almost ten years. A group that endures offers a promise of home, a place to return to time and time again, where we can put down roots. New Zealand offered me a promise of home as I think it does many émigrés. Homeless, I sought my roots in the land and the people of the land. This group, the other group members, myself as conductor, are there to be made use of in another kind of homelessness. Our roots feed us but they also transform the soil they are rooted in: we all learn from each other, drawing deep from the unconscious of the group. This paper offers a glimpse into how conducting this group has shaped my understanding with reference to the thinking of Bion and Winnicott. I have come to view work group mentality as a field phenomenon, such that the individuals take for granted the group as turangawaewae, without the need to inscribe a basic assumption on that field.

Whakarāpopotonga

Mai i te marama o Haratua 2007, ahau e whakahaere rōpū whakaora hinengaro ana. Ia wiki ka tūtaki mātau, whā tekau ma ono huihuinga i te tau, tata mō te tekau tau. He rōpū māia, he tohu kāinga whakaruruhau he wāhi hai hokihokinga, he wāhi whakatipuranga rarau. I whakaarahia mai e Aotearoa he oati kāinga pērā anō ki tōku whakaaro ki te nuinga o te hunga manene. Kāinga kore, i whai pūtaketanga au i roto i ngā iwi o te whenua. Ko tēnei rōpū, hūanga o ētahi atu rōpū me au hai kaiwhakahaere e tū ana hei whai take mō tētāhi atu momo kāinga kore. Whāngai ai tātau e ō tātau pūtake, whakarerehia anō ai hoki te papa e ngā takotoranga pakiaka: he whakaakoranga tā tēnā ki tēnā, whāia hōhōnuhia mai i te mauri moe o te rōpū. Ko tā tēnei tuhinga he hoatu pitopito whakaaturanga ki te āhua o tōku mātatau ki ngā whakaaro o Piona rāua ko Winikote i ahu mai i taku takinga i tēnei rōpū. Kua puta mai ki a au te whakaohomauri o te hinengaro mahinga ā rōpū, inā rā te noho a tēnā, ā tēnā i runga i te whakaaro ko te rōpū te tūrangawaewae , ā tē aro ake i te ahunga mai o tēnei whakaaro i hea.