Research as an extended group phenomenon: Is 'hard science' a sexual metaphor?

Abstract

The article 'The Group Conductor and Group Research - Ethical, Conceptual and Technical Problems' (Group Analysis, December 2000) by Birgitt Balhausen-Scharf and Gerhard Rudnitzki is approached as a description of research as a group analysable experience, and hence, though perhaps not generally seen that way, as something for which group analysts have pertinent and specific skills, particularly in the field of 'dynamic administration'. Their article describes the authors' departure from what they see as a largely flawed, perhaps failed, research group experience. In some ways it reflects that group experience, showing some lack of clarity about gross numbers and in the diagrammatic simplifications offered, also in possibly suggesting some idealizing (and fearful) projective views of research, or of outcome research, may have been held by the researchers. On the positive side, the article gives a very clear depiction of how easily well-intentioned research efforts can go astray, and how being involved in research can impinge on group conductors' and patients' conscious and unconscious experience of groups. Some reasons for the experience having taken the shape it did, and some wider, more positive views of the potential for the group-analytic world to embrace research more confidently and creatively are offered.