Abstract
This is book is part of the New International Library of Group Analysis published by Routledge, of which Earl Hopper is the series editor. Arturo Ezquerro and María Cañete are group analysts with extensive clinical experience in private and public clinical services. They are well known for their deep involvement and knowledge of attachment theory, having had a personal relationship with John Bowlby as disciples and friends. As in previous publications by these authors, this text is written in a way that is clear, intelligible and, at the same time, erudite. The book is composed of seven chapters plus an introduction and epilogue. Four chapters, the introduction and the epilogue are jointly written by Arturo and María, while two chapters are solely signed by Arturo.
A central point in this book is the concept of ‘group attachment’, a novel concept in attachment theory and its present development. In their words, group attachment can be defined as ‘a construct that agglutinates a complex constellation of meaningful relationships, in the group, with its members and with the group-as-a-whole, with a view of maximising survival, growth and creativity’.
As we all know, Bowlby wrote in 1977, ‘What for convenience I am terming attachment theory is a way of conceptualizing the propensity of human beings to make strong affectional bonds to particular others and of explaining the many forms of emotional distress and personality disturbance, including anxiety, anger, depression and emotional detachment, to which unwilling separation and loss give rise’.
The concept of ‘group attachment’ adds an important dimension about the role of group membership and affiliation in both optimal and sub-optimal functioning, primarily in terms of survival but also in terms of meeting the many other needs that human beings have.
From its inception, attachment theory was a psychoanalytic paradigm, which marks the transition from a one-person psychology (epitomized by traditional Kleinian thinking) to a two-person psychology and then a multi-person psychology (the latter highly congenial with group analysis). This book enhances the link between attachment theory (as a multi-person psychology) and group analysis. It does so at two levels: theoretical and clinical. In the clinical realm the reader will find several vignettes that clearly illustrate the principles that the authors formulate.
Although the text makes fleeting references to other forms of group therapy, like psychodrama, play therapy and multifamily therapy, the focus is on group analysis and its British roots and the British context. This is a limitation of the book but a limitation that was necessary in order to not transform the book into an encyclopaedia, which was clearly what the authors needed to avoid, despite their erudition.
Although ill-informed people believe that attachment theory is mainly concerned with young children and their parents, Bowlby conceived attachment theory in the context of the entire life cycle and intergenerational transmission of patterns of relatedness. In this context, in line with Bowlby’s thinking, Arturo and María dedicate separate chapters to explore group analysis with children, adolescents, young adults, adults, middle-aged people and older adults. Their reflections are solidified by taking into account the contribution of a myriad of developmental psychologists, like Sroufe, Stern, Trevarthen, Hobson, Meltzoff, Moll, Tomasello and many others. Personally, I would have included references to the Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood (Sroufe et al., 2005). Alan Sroufe and his team at the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development conducted the longest-running study of attachment behaviour, highlighting the main reasons why we each behave as we do and see the world as we do. In 2020 Sroufe published an excellent book which is a mixture of autobiographical notes and research findings in which he writes about the relationship between internal attachment organization and group behaviour.
In Chapter Five, Arturo highlights the fact that many early psychoanalysts considered children as inherently destructive while attachment theory has demonstrated that destructiveness is primarily the result of intergenerational trauma, as Felicity de Zulueta (1993) has clearly shown. Arturo (p.167) gives an example of misguided assertions by some psychoanalysts quoting Edward Glover (1988–1972). Incidentally, Glover was not a great friend of the Kleinian position. I normally celebrate with joy the way Arturo, in his writing and lectures, unmasks and criticizes outdated psychoanalytic ideas (many of which, unfortunately, are still being considered as valid by many). At page 270 Arturo and María mention that a high-profile psychoanalyst, such as Hanna Segal said that Bowlby ‘was attacking psychoanalysis and that his goal was to destroy it’. I have personally experienced the effect of this view when Norman Cohen, the analyst I had at the time, interpreted my association with John Bowlby as an attack on psychoanalysis. The last time I heard Arturo talking in this way was in a well-attended lecture he gave in Barcelona in 2022. There have been two reasons to explain the hostility that Bowlby received from his fellow psychoanalysts. One was that he proposed a new motivational theory as opposed to Freud’s instinct theory. The other is that, in contrast with psychoanalysts who claim the world of phantasies and psychic reality has prominence over interpersonal experience in constructing the representational world, Bowlby claimed that interpersonal experience is the matrix in which psychic life evolves (Marrone, 1998, 2014; Diamond and Marrone, 2003).
The interplay of contrasting ideas is not only the result of scientific debates but also of complex political and institutional factors, as Arturo delineates in chapter six, writing about Bion’s and Ezriel’s group work at the Tavistock Clinic and subsequent developments within that institution. Arturo and María write of a ‘political self’ (p.270). The political self involves values and a complex set of emotional loyalties. They say, ‘We are all political beings and resistance to theoretical and methodological change often takes the form of political action’. In this context this is not only a well-designed and well written book about attachment theory, group analysis, developmental psychology, clinical practice and how to integrate them in a meaningful way. It is also a political statement.