The Suboptimal Seminar

(Originally published as 'My Way' - a regular column in the newsletter of the British Association of Group Psychotherapists - in the Special IAGP Congress Edition, August 98. The Congress theme by the way was 'Annihilation, Survival, Re-creation'.)

At a BAGP seminar some time ago I gave the paper I am proud to be presenting this week during Congress. This is how it went.

I imagined a large dimly lit room humming in anticipation of my presentation: 'The Suboptimal Group'. Row upon row of familiar, half familiar and unknown faces, all awaiting my paper. People standing at the back. Men smoking pipes and knowingly nodding. Formidable women all a flutter. I hear whispers, "By 'suboptimal' does he mean ...." and, "How brave. I couldn't talk about that, could you?" and, "This is the next big paper .....". As I enter the room I see a bespectacled, white haired middle aged man in a lounge suit quietly stroking his beard. Oh, and isn't that Bion over there next to Melanie and SHF with Queen Elizabeth!! Earl and Malcolm......

I launch into my paper. "The suboptimal group exists in similar relation to the Foulkesian small group. It is the group which persistently exists on or below the Foulkesian breadline of five members, for which selection and composition represent distant ideals and, at its other extreme, it is psychotherapy on the cusp bordering individual and group. It can have as few as two active members and is precariously close to being something else, be it individual psychotherapy or inexistence and, as such, survival and annihilation are key themes - which I will come to later."

Annihilation? As I speak reality begins to dawn. I see only six others in the room. The empty chairs outnumber the people. Where's the man in the lounge suit? and all the others? I stutter on, "The suboptimal group is the group that many of us work with while attempting to set up and conduct analytic small groups. It is not the group we hoped we were setting up but is the one we all too often find ourselves working with."

I scream, inwardly. Six!! I wish they would all go away. This can't be happening to me!! I press on and finish. ".... treading a fine line between annihilation and survival. An unsteady equilibrium can establish itself, one I suggest can be worked with. It is very painful to conduct and there are pressures to avoid it, however my experience would suggest, contrary to Foulkesian idealism, that where certain conditions prevail and group psychotherapy is to be offered, we are faced with little alternative." Of course the seven of us then go on to have an interesting discussion. Someone suggests there may well be another paper being read somewhere else in London that evening. I imagine that group .....

Then I remember the week before presenting the same paper to a group of colleagues, fifteen women and one man, at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation. It went better than I imagined. They'd lapped it up - like Frank in Las Vegas. I begin to feel a little better. Suboptimal? That's my kind of town.

Peter Zelaskowski

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