Group psychotherapy was pioneered by S. H. Foulkes with his psychoanalytic patients and later with soldiers in the Northfield experiments at Hollymoor Hospital.
Group analysis combines psychoanalytic insights with an understanding of social and interpersonal functioning.
Problems are seen at the level of group, organisation or institutional system; not solely in the individual sufferer, as they do in prevailing medical models.
Democracy and co-operation are the pillars through which group-mediated solutions to problems can flow in ways that are enduring.
The group is seen as not merely a dynamic entity of its own, but functions within a sociocultural context that influences its processes.