Groupwork With Women Who Are Obese And The Implications For Women With
Other Forms Of Eating Distress
This workshop will begin by presenting an account
of Julia Buckroyd's experience of running groups for obese women and the use
of the group as a therapeutic force. Participants will be invited to discuss
the way in which the group was conducted and their views on the relevance of
different group theories.
The themes derived from this work will then be
discussed in relation to women with other forms of eating distress.
Participants in the workshop will be invited to contribute their experience
of working with these client groups and to discuss the relevance of group work
to them.
A therapeutic group learns how to communicate as a group. Each member
joins the conversation, contributing opinions, challenges, associations, support,
humour, etc. There is engagement and participation with a diversity of viewpoints
and emotions, which in time moderates the noisy and dominating and amplifies
the quiet and withdrawn. There may be conflict or consensus, but not always.
The differing perspectives can hang in the air and swirl around each other
as the conversation moves, to return at some later date.
In this way, members learn to communicate with different perspectives, not
only in the group itself, but also with their own intrapsychic voices, objects,
and configurations. The internal conversations change as the external conversations
do, bringing genuine therapeutic growth.
Clients in individual therapy bring their own internal group into the counselling
room too. This is not the world of hallucination or dissociation, but the internal
dialogue that becomes revealed as the client learns to pay attention to their
own internal worlds. In the setting of individual therapy, the counsellor can
facilitate the communications in the internal group in ways that relate to
the work of a group facilitator. This seminar explores the parallels between
working with the group within clients, and working with the group without, in
the therapy group.
The relationship between the individual and the group as a whole.
Creating space between the twin anxieties of merger and isolation.
Facilitator as "Inside Outsider"; maintaining
the therapeutic stance.
Biographies
Julia Buckroyd
Julia Buckroyd is Professor of Counselling at the University of Hertfordshire, and Director of the Obesity and Eating Disorders Research
Unit in the Health Sciences Research Institute. She has been working in the
field of eating disorders since 1984. Her original training was as an academic
historian but she re-trained first as a counsellor and then as a psychotherapist.
Her first post as a counsellor in 1984 was at London Contemporary Dance School where she first became interested in eating disorders. Her
first book on eating disorders, Eating your heart oOut, derives mostly
from this experience. Since 1994 she has worked at the University of Hertfordshire while continuing her clinical work as a therapist. Her
work with dancers, including work relating to eating disorders was published
in The student dancer. In the past five years she has started to apply
the insights of therapeutic work with eating disorders to obesity and has been
carrying out a research programme to explore whether psychotherapeutic groups
for obese women are effective in creating sustained weight loss. This work
is ongoing with a programme of research in this area.
Chris Rose is a psychotherapist, BACP and UKCP accredited, who works in private
practice in the West Midlands, and also in primary care. She is a qualified group psychotherapist,
working both with individuals and groups. Chris facilitates a variety of groups – therapy,
personal development, staff support, supervision, and also teaches about group
work. She is interested in theories of language, intersubjectivity, and of
gender, and the development of self reflexivity. She is currently writing a
book on the personal development group, and is the assistant editor for group
work for Therapy Today.
Jane McKeown
Jane McKeown is manager of the Group Therapy Service at wpf Counselling and
Psychotherapy, where she also conducts two analytic groups. Currently,
she is also involved in establishing groups for parents of children with aspergers,
autistic spectrum disorders, and other behavioural difficulties.
She trained as a group analytic psychotherapist having already completed a
psychodynamic counselling course. She has experience of running
therapeutic groups for a wide range of clients, in a variety of organisations,
including the NHS, private healthcare providers, higher education and social
services.
A particular interest of Janes is the ever present dynamic tension between
in and out, belonging and not belonging, which is created by membership
of all groups and on which much of the work of the therapy group focuses.
