From group analytic to systems-centered consulting: a comparison of experience

ABSTRACT

This article provides a personal account of experiences of consultation to staff working in residential child care. The paper starts with experiences of receiving consultation while working in a therapeutic community, then of providing consultation to children’s homes, firstly from a group-analytic perspective and subsequently using a systems-centred approach. The author considers the goal of consulting to staff teams who care for traumatised children and draws conclusions about the different approaches regarding which are most likely to achieve the stated goal. Functional subgrouping – the central method of systems-centred approach – is described in action.

KEYWORDS:

• Systems-centered
• group analytic
• consultation
• therapeutic community

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Functional subgrouping is the central technique of systems-centered practice. See later in this article for a description of how it is used in practice.

2. SCT approaches anxiety as a defence against reality – we ‘go anxious’ as a way of relating to and managing uncertainty. We generate a constructed reality in which we can tell the future (negative predictions) or we can tell what others are thinking (mind reads) and relate to these constructions as if they are real. In SCT we learn to undo these defences and come back to reality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mike Maher

Mike Maher was formerly Deputy Director at Peper Harow Therapeutic Community, and has worked in and with childcare and treatment for more than 30 years. He is Director of the Systems-Centered Training and Research Institute (www.systemscentered.com). Mike specialises in working with those who work with troubled families and children, offering training, consultation and clinical supervision to organisations and individuals, as well as running a private psychotherapy practice. He has presented at many international conferences and his work has been regularly published.