Borrowing My Self: An Exploration of Exchange as a Group-Specific Therapeutic Factor

Abstract

Exchange, one of Foulkes’s four group-specific therapeutic factors, is a valuable if neglected concept in group-analytic literature, standing for the encounter with difference in the group. Groups’ multiple poles of difference allow individuals to experience and explore a range of possibilities hitherto unimagined. The clinical dimensions of exchange are explored through the metaphor of the mother/baby dyad; identity formation in a specific cultural context grounded in familial and group identifications are also touched upon. In the group these together allow for the creation, and recreation, of individual identity.

Keywords

exchange difference information identity identification

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