Frustration is one of the basic elements of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. In the Anglophone literature, this term is rarer, with abstinence being preferred.
In a sense, it is a milder term, but on the other hand, it includes a strong presumption of dependence. There is a certain amount of destruction in both terms.
However, destructiveness also has its creative potential. In addition, it is strongly associated with absence, in Klein's and especially in Bion's theoretical corpus it is the absent breast that causes aggression.
For Green, it is the work of negatives and negative hallucination that have a structuring effect. And last but not least, the destruction of an object in Winnicott results in its usability - without aggression, separation is not possible.
It consisted of daily group psychotherapy conducted psychodynamically. The group consisted of 11 members, 5 men and 6 women.
The specificity of the group was the intensity and persistence with which it sought a dependent position and attacked thinking, which of course led to the frustration of both the group and the therapist. The paper aims primarily to link clinical practice and theory.
The purpose of this link is to offer optics through which frustration and destructive processes in the group can be seen as therapeutically productive and understandable phenomena. At the same time, the paper touches on the possibility of applying psychoanalytic theory, which is primarily dyadic, to group work.
The above-mentioned theoretical background will serve to reflect on the course of one seven-week long therapeutic program.