The authors describe the structure of their therapy group practice, rules that apply within the group, administrative contracts, issues regarding socializing in a small city, how they think about the process in the group, and some specific examples of methods they use. They also discuss the presence in the group of participant observers (therapists in training).

One of the most vexing challenges for a group facilitator is deciding what to do when a group member seems to be interfering with the group’s task (be it therapy, development, or learning) by repeatedly raising the same issues or demonstrating the same behavior. Often the group tries to “manage” such a member and then becomes stuck in group games. This article addresses the tension for the group leader between considering the needs of both the individual and the group as an entity in itself. Are the phenomena that occur in groups the result of individual tendencies, or are they the manifestations of that mysterious “meta-entity” referred to as the group-as-a-whole? In transactional analysis there is a tendency to rely on the examination of individual scripts to understand and resolve impasses in a group. This article introduces the concept of “role lock” (Bogdanoff & Elbaum, 1978) to address the meaning of impasses that involve the unconscious interaction of what Foulkes (1948/1983) called the “group-as-a-whole.”

This article describes a form of group bodywork using a couple dance (the Argentine tango), which serves as a “container” for the experience and feelings of participants. The frame offered by the group and the dance facilitates awareness of and experimenting with posture, how participants move and sense their bodies, and how they relate to others through their bodies. The aim of the group is to access nonverbal levels of functioning using a vehicle that is more conducive to progressive rather than to regressive work. Dancing with a partner particularly opens up issues concerning the other, including meeting/leaving, guiding/following, deciding/trusting, and so on. The title of this article also refers to the cocreative aspect of psychotherapy, an interactive process based on mutual listening and responding that is, in many ways, similar to a dance.

An inpatient psychiatric unit in a general hospital allows one to look at the interrelationships of milieu, therapeutic and administrative groups, and group treatment as they operate within larger organizational and societal matrices. This article describes a children’s psychiatric unit grounded in transactional analysis, its successes in terms of treatment, and its ultimate demise because of external economic pressures. The treatment of a 10-year-old with Cotard’s syndrome—a rare condition characterized by the belief that one is dead—is used to demonstrate the synergistic effects of multiple interdependent therapeutic groups.

This article describes a small residential therapeutic community in England that operates on a group model and uses transactional analysis as its main theoretical framework. The different types of groups and their functions are outlined, and the ways these fit together into a therapeutic regime is explained. Also described are the ways that group dynamics are viewed and attended to in this environment.

Six theories of adult education and associated philosophies (as described by Elias & Merriam [1980/1995]) are analyzed from a transactional analysis perspective, including “groups’ group imago” (Clarke, 1996) and learning contract. The relevance and application of each theory to transactional analysis training groups is discussed.

In group consultation, as in therapy, a shared awareness of projective processes is helpful to both consultant and client. If left unaware, the flow of material can submerge both. The consultant risks colluding with the group by adopting their projections and then either withdrawing or acting out. When such situations are “exposed,” they are usually considered to be either professional embarrassments or evidence of professional incompetence. Yet careful investigation of the experience of collusion can lead to a deeper understanding of the covert and unconscious elements of working with a group.

This article describes a training workshop conducted by the author at an institute where she is a consulting staff member. The working situation, the participants, the content, and the format of the training situation are described and related to group theory. Aspects of transference and countertransference that developed and how they were managed in the context of a training group are discussed.

In this special issue of the TAJ devoted to the applications of transactional analysis in a broad range of group formats and activities, we are publishing English translations of the abstracts from two recent issues of the Italian journal Quaderni di Psicologia, Analisi Transazionale e Scienze Umane [Journal of Psychology, Transactional Analysis and Human Sciences]. Both of the issues were devoted to transactional analysis group theory and practice in clinical, organizational, and educational fields.