Last year I attended a conference of the Mid-Atlantic Group Psychotherapy Society in Williamsburg entitle “Siblings In Groups”, chaired by the British psychoanalyst Earl Hopper M.D.. As I searched for a seat during one of the programs, another conference attendee saw me “in need”, patted the seat next to her and then invited me to sit down next to her. Slightly embarrassed when I said, “Older sister, huh?”, her laugh conveyed that she was. We laughed together when I told her I was a “younger sister”.

Recognizing that the motivations and the dynamics which make an older sister invite a younger to sit with her are outside of our conscious awareness, brought to the fore the fact that we are so much driven by our unconscious and that behaviors are perfectly in line with that. An oldest will invariably treat the world as if they were younger siblings, and a youngest will do the reverse when family dynamics parallel these  conditions.

Group therapy allows for the reenactment of family dynamics, in particular those involving siblings. You may take the person out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the person. Life, and group therapy as a microcosm of that, becomes a “hall of mirrors” of those family members with whom one has been raised. Seeing members of ones’ family in a group allows for the reintegration of disowned aspects of oneself. Group therapy provides people with an opportunity, perhaps for the very first time, to see the ways in which they reenact old family dramas, and ultimately change them