Observations on a Role — Analysis Group Some Boundary Aspects

Abstract

This particular type of group, which shares nothing with role-play, was set up at the end of 1978 for the Institute of Psychiatry at Bari University within an extra-curriculum training programme. Its task was to explore the nature of difficulties encountered in one’s role relationships within an institutional setting. The background of the event was mainly based on models which I had derived from personal experiences of the Conferences run by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and on some of its main heuristic concepts, those of primary task and of boundary. The group had twelve members — psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers — and met fortnightly for two one-and-a-half-hour sessions. Apart from the time span, a notable constraint was that most members knew each other and some of them worked together; some had also had working relations with me. By contract, the first phase of the group’s activity was to be centred on the here and now process; a second phase would have constituted the role-analysis proper. The working hypothesis behind this design being that the cohesion acquired by the group in the first phase would enable it to interact more freely in the area of institutional roles.