Parallel Groups: Simultaneous Dynamic Groups—Mutual Influences and Unique Phenomena

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Erfat Zigenlaub1 and Ella Stolper

This article analyzes phenomena central to parallel groups, which are two groups that were formed from the splitting of one large group and are conducted in parallel and with some affinity. The groups described in this article were conducted as part of a group leadership training program. The conceptual model used for analyzing the groups is a model of twin development, since twins are, at the same time, a split entity and one whole. The unique phenomena of parallel groups that are discussed in this article are striving for merger versus seeking uniqueness, group resonance, “new movement” and “continuing movement,” intermission as transitional space, and two-group leadership units. The article discusses various applications of parallel groups for group leadership training programs and offers practical recommendations for leaders of parallel groups.

PARALLEL GROUPS

Group leadership training programs include a model that we call parallel groups. These are two groups that are formed from the splitting of one large group and are conducted in parallel, with affinity between them. In some cases, as in the case described in this article, the groups are conducted in a common space and observe each other. In other cases, as in the case of the groups described by Geller and

1 Faculty, Netanya Academic College of Arts and Society, Haifa University School of Social Work (Bnei-Brak branch) and Tel Aviv University two-year Group Facilitation Program. Correspondence should be addressed to Efrat Zigenlaub, PhD, 172 Yehuda Street, Modiin, Israel, 71724. E-mail: efrat213@bezeqint.net.

2 Faculty, Group Facilitation Programs, Tel Aviv University and Netanya Academic College of Arts and Society; Coordinator, Group Facilitation Program, Central School for Social Service Workers; and group analyst, Tel Aviv.

Shadach (2010), which were conducted during group therapy training as part of psychology studies, the two groups are led using the fishbowl technique (Knight et al., 2010), and they can see each other. Finally, in many training settings, two or more groups are conducted in separate rooms at the same time and cannot observe each other, and they often share leaders, who switch groups in the middle of the process. Even though these groups are not conducted in a shared space, some of the applications of the current model are relevant to them, because they were split from one large group, are led in parallel, often share the same group leaders, and “keep each other in mind.”

As opposed to the many articles written on group therapy, research on groups that are conducted as part of group leadership training has been more recent. The few existing studies in this field have described challenges unique to these groups, which are different from nonacademic therapeutic groups. Davidson-Arad, Stange, Wilson, and Pinhassi (2002) described the course of an interpersonal relationships course conducted in the School of Social Work at Tel Aviv University. The authors described unique features of groups in the academic setting, such as the short duration of the process—one semester—and the grade given at the end of the course, when even though, formally, the students’ way of participating in the group was not graded and the existence of academic evaluation was felt in the sessions. Zigenlaub (2017) described interpersonal relationship groups that were conducted as part of a group social work course in an ultra-orthodox college. In her article, “Silence Is a Fence around Wisdom,” she described obstacles in the way of the group’s development that resulted both from the students’ ultra-orthodox culture and the academic nature of the course, which was compulsory, and also that the relationships continued outside the group boundaries. In a paper relevant to our subject, Geller and Shadach (2010) described a group therapy training seminar that was conducted as part of psychology studies, which included creative structures, such as interpersonal group and observation group, using the fishbowl technique (Knight et al., 2010) as well as a peer supervision course, in which the observation was conducted behind a one-way mirror.

The focus of the current article is a course that included an interpersonal group and an observation group that were conducted in parallel, a course that actually constituted a combination of two courses—interpersonal relationships and guided group observation—in one semester. This special structure created a setting of two parallel groups—an interpersonal group Various scholars believe that, to maintain unity, a process of developing a complementary personality occurs in the twin. Each twin develops capacities that are complementary to those of their twin, thus increasing the effective functioning of the twin team. These two figures become one single, harmonious, and whole figure. The two twins are not copies of one another, and each actively strives to complement the qualities of the other (Smilanski & Bichler, 1987).

Certain researchers have argued that the twin must face a twofold task in the search for self-identity, as it must undergo two separation processes—one from its mother and the other from its twin. These processes become more and more complex the greater the similarity between the two twins and the more their upbringing and education are shared (Leonard, 1961).

and an observation group—that worked in parallel, each on a different task. During the five years we have been leading this course, we have discovered some resemblance between the development of parallel groups and twin development, and thus we chose twinship as a conceptual frame for this article.

In this article, we analyze several phenomena that are unique to parallel groups in order to understand the mutual influences created by the parallel setting in each group process.

Twinship is a twofold entity: On one hand, it is a single entity that is divided into two, especially in the case of monozygotic twins, which originate in a single split ovum. On the other hand, we are dealing with two separate entities that are in competition with each other for the same resources from pregnancy, through birth and throughout life.

Both complex and ambivalent competition between twins also entail mechanisms for reparation and reconciliation. From his observations, Arlow (1960) concluded that twins have ambivalent relationships, and he depicted their pseudo-harmonious solution of the issue of rivalry. Initially, the child is egocentric, claiming ownership of the mother and making no allowance for its sibling; however, rivalry poses so great a threat to the integrity of the twins’ relationship that they consider maintaining equality as the best defensive measure

Parenting twins is a unique situation in and of itself. Plotnik (2003) described the twinship situation through the concept of simultaneity, demonstrating how this is manifest in the different stages of parenting twins, from pregnancy to birth and all throughout life.

This review suggests that in twin development, the presence of the twin strongly affects the infant’s self-perception and psychological development. As we see it, similarly to the “mother–infant unit” that Winnicott (1956) described as creating the special constitution of the single infant, in the case of twins, there is a whole “mother–twins” unit, which can also be viewed as three parallel split developmental units: mother–infant unit, mother–twin unit, and infant–twin unit. The simultaneous presence of these units and the incessant movement between them adds another dimension of impressions registered in the infant’s self, forming a unique primary experience that is different from that of a “single child.”

In psychoanalytic literature, twinship is a term that does not necessarily refer to actual twins, but to an aspiration for merger and connection. Bion coined the term “imaginary twin”—the title of his first lecture before the British Psychoanalytic Society in 1950. Bion believed that twinship relationships in the transference are related to early developmental stages that are tied to the schizoid–paranoid position, in which the patient splits off parts of himself, personifies them, and projects them onto another person. This process results from the need to tolerate objects that are not under his absolute control, and from the difficulty of experiencing a reality different from his own. The “imaginary twin” protects the subject from feelings of dependence and helplessness. Kohut spoke of the “twinship need” as the need of the self to feel resemblance to another person, something that guarantees the self that he is surrounded by others like him and that he is human among humans (Altman, 2013). In her moving paper, “Covenant of the Pieces,” Aharoni (2012) described the special bond developed between herself and a patient who was dying from cancer, as she held on to the hope that this twinship could lead to her recovery and save her from dying. In Aharoni’s words: “I would like to think of twinship not only in its concrete sense, but as a possible universal emotional and psychological experience, an experience interwoven in object relations which can be expressed in the therapeutic space in various forms” (p. 136).

OBJECT RELATIONS AS A CONCEPTUAL FRAME FOR GROUP PROCESSES

In this paper, we would like to compare parenthood of twins and leadership of parallel groups. Extensive parts of group leadership theory are based on the application of mother–infant theories to the relationship between the individual and his group. Bion (1961) applied principles derived from Melanie Klein’s object relations theory to the group realm. Klein described the ambivalent relationship between infant and mother, which includes the wish for merger, on the one hand, and the desire for separation, on the other. These two binary possibilities create in the infant conflicted feelings of love/hate toward the object-mother (Klein, 1946). According to Bion, groups, too, arouse intense ambivalent feelings in their members. Individuals who enter a group experience tension between the fear of being swallowed by the group and of losing their uniqueness and the wish to belong (Bion, 1961). Groups, like mothers, arouse conflicted and ambivalent love and hate feelings. These feelings take the adults who enter the group back to their infantile histories and thus create a regression to the mother–infant dyad and to the coping strategies used in infancy, such as splitting and projective identification (Wells, 1980).

In addition to these theories that emphasize the mother–infant relationship, Foulkes and Anthony (1963) contributed the term horizontal transference, which refers to sibling transference in the group. Sibling transference occurs when a person transfers the emotional aspects of his relationship with his sister or brother to a person who resembles them symbolically, or plays a similar role in his life. Foulkes and Anthony believed that horizontal transference is more dominant in groups than in individual therapy, because the focus is on the present “here and now” experiences and on the relationships with the participants. In this paper, we would like to broaden the term horizontal transference to transference between parallel groups and not only between the participants of one group.

STAGES OF GROUP DEVELOPMENT

A large part of group development models is also based on models of infant development. Thus, for example, Saravay’s (1978) developmental model builds on Freud’s (1905/2002) psychosexual model. Bennis and Shepard’s (1956) developmental model is also based on Freud’s distinction between authority orientation and membership orientation, and Melanie Klein’s (1946) model of developmental stages has been adapted by Biran (1983) to the realm of groups

Mackenzie and Livesley’s (1983) group model that is relevant to short-term groups is also based on these models and on general systems theory (Durkin, 1981) for analysis of groups. This model describes six sequential developmental phases. The first phase is engagement, in which the basic task is to resolve the issue of engagement between the members. The main mechanism through which engagement is developed is universality. The group seeks resemblance between its members and cannot yet tolerate difference and conflicts.

The second phase is differentiation: The group focuses on finding the different and unique, a process that sometimes involves conflict and rebellion against the leader (Mackenzie & Livesley, 1983). Other theories emphasize the differentiation into culturally determined subgroups (Agazarian, 1997).

The next three phases are individuation, intimacy, and mutuality, which are unified in some of the models under the heading maturity phase (Rutan & Stone, 2001) or advanced phase (Berman & Weinberg, 2000). These phases involve personal and interpersonal introspection and exploration of transferences and projections (Rutan & Stone, 2001).

Finally, the last phase is termination, in which the group summarizes the experiences and insights gained from the group work and separates (MacKenzie & Livesley, 1983). Bennis and Shepard (1956) contributed the distinction between the initial phases of group development, in which the group is focused on authority, and the more advanced phases, in which it begins to focus on the peer group.

Following the comparison between theories of infant development and theories of group development, similar to the analysis of a single group according to a model of a single child’s development, we would like to analyze parallel groups according to a model of twin development. The groups we describe in this article included three simultaneous units: mother–infant (group leader–interpersonal group), mother–twin (group leader–observation group), and twin–twin (interpersonal group–observation group). These units were mutually influential, a fact that shaped the group processes. Later in the article, we describe unique phenomena that result from these special circumstances.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The title of the course is Guided Group Observation, and its goal is to create a space where the students can personally experience an interpersonal relationship group as well as participate in a guided observation of a group to learn how group processes and leadership work develop. The course is offered in the spring semester during the first year at the Graduate School of Arts and Social Studies at Netanya College of Arts and Social Studies. The group includes 20–24 participants (most of them women) who are divided into two subgroups. One subgroup forms an interpersonal relationships group (henceforth called the interpersonal group) that meets for five double, 75-minute-long sessions (10 sessions in total), where every two sessions are sequential with an intermission of 15 minutes. The group is led by two group leaders (the two authors). The second subgroup is an observation group that observes the first group through a one-way mirror and is led by a third group leader. While the leaders of the interpersonal group are permanent, and have been leading this course for several years in a row, the leader of the observation group changes each year for various organizational reasons. Before the group sessions and during the intermission between every two sessions, the conductors of the interpersonal group and the conductor of the observation group met for a joint session that was meant to create a shared space of reflection on processes that have occurred on the level of the group as a whole. At the end of the day (after the second session), the conductor of the observation group stayed with the observation group for 15 more minutes to analyze the processes that have occurred in the interpersonal group and their influences on the observation group, and the conductors of the interpersonal group met to process the contents and processes of the interpersonal group. After 10 sessions, the groups switch roles: the group that started as an observation group becomes an interpersonal group and the group that was observed first becomes the observation group. The group leaders hold their positions: The two leaders who led the first interpersonal group later lead the second interpersonal group, and the leader of the observation group continues to lead the new observation group. In addition to these sessions, two more sessions—the first and the last—are conducted in the large group, which includes both groups and the three group leaders. In the first session, the whole group was divided into two subgroups in the following manner: The participants were asked to divide into pairs based on minimal acquaintance; then, the pairs were asked to group into fours in the same manner, and finally, we grouped each two or three fours into a group. In the last session, the two subgroups reunited, and a summary of the course was co-conducted by the conductors of the interpersonal and observation groups. This session allowed an open discussion of the relationship between the two groups and their mutual influence. We perceive the interpersonal group, the observation group, and the intermission between the sessions as one integral transpersonal space that communicates with us through the group as a whole.

IDENTIFIED PHENOMENA IN THE LIVES OF PARALLEL GROUPS: STRIVING FOR MERGER VERSUS SEEKING UNIQUENESS

Like twins, at every given moment, our two groups were both one whole group and two separate groups. The whole entity symbolized the whole “family matrix” (Foulkes, 1973), in which all the structures and the movement between them take place. The split entity refers to each unique separate structure and allows reflecting, even if artificially, on the differences between them and their mutual influence and contribution. At every given moment, the “whole family” existed as a whole unit while, at the same time, each group had its own separate developmental task and intragroup dynamics.

Already in the first sessions, the groups related to the shared space that was connected through a one-sided mirror and to the essence of the course as a whole, but at the same time, one could see how the interpersonal group tried to unite as a separate, independent entity and to establish the conditions and norms this process requires. As in any group (Bennis & Shepard, 1956) in the initial phase, the group notably focused on the group leaders’ unit, a preoccupation that was expressed through stories about authority figures, such as government, parents, and teachers. However, at the same time, already in this initial phase, the group became concerned with the “twin group” that was left behind the mirror, something that was expressed through telling stories about siblings in general and twins in particular. The content of some of these stories was separation of siblings from their parents. The relationship between the groups involved striving for merger, on one hand, and seeking uniqueness, on the other hand.

The striving for merger was expressed in stories and metaphors that expressed a desire to merge, in relationships between pairs that were split into two groups and wanted to unite, in participants who “forgot” which group they belonged to, as well as in the wish to unite the groups in moments of emptiness and no-show of participants.

One year, two of the participants, Julia and Siham, were good friends who claimed to have never been apart from each other since childhood. Without knowing of their relationship, in the first session, we had split them between the two groups, so that Julia was in the first observation group and Siham was in the first interpersonal group. In the first session of the interpersonal group, Siham sat down in front of the mirror, and this became her regular seat during all the remaining sessions. Even though the mirror was one-sided, it seemed as though she had been communicating with her friend Julia without being able to see her. Sometimes the group identified their “secret language” and felt that some of Siham’s communications were actually addressed to Julia. To our surprise, after the groups switched, we discovered that Julia chose Siham’s seat. The merger fantasy of the two sometimes managed to confuse us, too, and on several occasions, we called one of them by the other’s name or accidentally confused their stories. We interpreted the twinship between Julia and Siham as a “group voice” (Bion, 1961) that strives for merger between the two groups.

Another expression of the striving for merger was Margaret’s “confusion.” Margaret belonged to the observation group. Still, in the beginning of every session, Margaret was “confused” and entered the interpersonal group “by mistake.” In these situations, which happened even during advanced sessions of the group, some of the group members also became confused and did not remember which group Margaret belonged to. We interpreted the group “forgetfulness” as the desire of the whole group to unite and as an attempt to cancel the artificial separation forced on the group.

In one of the sessions, the merger fantasy became an outspoken wish, when the groups tried to fill the void and the empty spaces (Stolper, 2015) by uniting. In this session, only one-third of the interpersonal group was present, and the participants were intensely preoccupied with the empty chairs. One participant shared a personal story that received no response and was left unaddressed. She spoke of the difficult feeling arising in people who receive no feedback or mirroring. One participant offered a “solution”: to change the setting and invite the observers to the group. We interpreted this as the group’s difficulty in coping with the absence and pain involved in the “empty mirror” (Toder & Weinberg, 2006), and we saw this as an expression of a wish to fill the “empty spaces” and get rid of the void in the room. In retrospect, we realized that the suggestion to put the groups together also expressed a wish to unite the siblings and offered a way to cover up the differences, as a way of coping with the pain caused by the preference of one sibling over the other as well as by their separation.

In parallel to the striving for merger, the seeking of uniqueness stood out as well. The observation group, which later became the interpersonal group, made immense efforts to behave differently from the previous group and to control the situation so that they didn’t “fall into the same holes.” Thus, for instance, we learned that in one of the years, this group opened a WhatsApp group that was called “The Secret WhatsApp Group,” and its goal was to plan before every session what they would talk about. This group had been active for two or three sessions without our knowledge, a fact that prevented any possibility of having a spontaneous and free discussion during the sessions, and thus attacked the ability to free associate in the group (Foulkes, 1973). When the feelings of missing out and regret that were associated with the cautious and “stuck” group discussion started to be openly discussed, the participants gave up the secret WhatsApp group and dared to form authentic relationships in the room. There were also other issues that aroused conflict in the first group and that the second group tried to “bypass,” such as the Jewish–Arab relations and mutual feedback between participants. Dunn (1988) has argued that each sibling’s occupation of unique niches and self-definition according to the principle of “I will be your complete opposite” leads to the development of a “shadow sibling.” Shadow siblings divide their world between them and forbid each other from entering their psychological territory. Siblings who act in this manner become dependent on each other for achieving a complete feeling of wholeness. A shadow sibling is an object of envy and hatred, because his characteristics are denied from his sibling, leaving the latter outside the event, in a position of an observer (Dunn, 1988). We, too, felt that the twin sibling’s “shadow” and the desire not to resemble him often colored the sessions of the other group. This was expressed in the difficulty to cast aside the “shadow” of the “twin group” and their attempt to be “totally different from them” or in their incessant reminiscing about what had occurred in the parallel group at the expense of exploration and development of relationships in their own “mother group.”

Another phenomenon that, however, is not unique to twins but characterizes regular siblings as well was the competition between the groups. The unique setting of parallel groups made competition a dominant and powerful component in the room, on one hand, and led to an attempt to compensate the second group and to merge with it into a whole undividable social unit, on the other hand, similarly to comparison and competition processes that are common in twins (Arlow, 1960). In almost every group that we led, we heard expressions like “admit that you have never had a group like us before” or “we are so much more special than the other group,” alongside occasional complaints of discrimination on our part. In one of the sessions, for example, one participant commented on our silence: “In the previous group, there is no way you would have stayed silent for so long. In some of the situations we had here, if we had been them, you would have had a lot to say.”

The leader of the observation group also reported that the same competition had been occurring behind the mirror, even more vigorously, in the “first group” (the interpersonal group that became the observation group). The participants made remarks such as “we are so much better than them,” “we went deeper,” and “in their group, everything is superficial.” Another behavioral expression in the group that became the observation group was their forgetting to turn off the light as agreed in the group contract. We perceived this “forgetfulness” as a request to remain in the “spotlight” and not be forgotten as well as an attempt to prevent any possibility that we could engage in intimate work with the other group.

The intergroup competition affected the process in two opposite ways. On one hand, the groups’ observation of each other increased their tendency to compare and created defensive and sometimes even “antigroup” behavior (Nitsun, 2015). This was expressed in numerous attacks on the setting, such as frequent no-shows and tardiness, use of cellular phones, and participants’ confusion between the groups. On the other hand, we felt that, like “scholars’ rivalry,” the competition served as a driving and motivating force that pushed each group to progress in the process, and we often perceived it as an important driving force for the groups’ success despite the short period of time at their disposal.

RESONANCE BETWEEN THE GROUPS

As mentioned earlier, Foulkes and Anthony (1963) added another dimension of transference relations in the group, namely horizontal transference, which refers to sibling relationships, in addition to the previously existing vertical transference, which refers to the relationship with authority. We believe that horizontal transference did not occur only inside the group but also between the groups that existed in a common reality. In addition, Foulkes (1977) proposed the term resonance for understanding unconscious and spontaneous verbal and nonverbal interactions between group members, which resemble strumming the same emotional chords due to the shared presence. Resonance emphasizes the fact that this phenomenon occurs instinctively and inevitably and is relevant to the single participant, the group leader, and the group as a whole. The deeper understanding of resonance processes owes to the discovery of mirror neurons, areas in the human nervous system that are meant to perceive the emotional reactions of others and to elicit similar reactions in the perceiver (Berman, 2015). We assume that the resonance process occurred between our two groups, and mostly the observation group resonated with the interpersonal group. We found that several powerful experiences demonstrated the power of the resonance process.

On one occasion, we had split two good friends, Miri and Shiri, into different groups. They both had a combative character and were less popular in their groups. During the shared intermissions, they grouped and formed one front before the rest of the group. In one of the sessions, a conflict developed between Miri and her group, one in which she felt excluded and unpopular. When we met the leader of the observation group after the ending of that session, she looked upset and exhausted and told us of the drama that had occurred simultaneously in the observation room. Just as the confrontation between Miri and the group developed, Shiri started to fight with the observation group, a fight that revealed feelings of frustration and anger and led her to raise her voice and even to threaten. Just like an infant who sees in her twin a reflection of herself and cries when her sister is injured, Shiri reacted out of an intense resonance with her friend, which was expressed in an emotional and physical reaction that was identical to her friend’s condition. Since resonance reactions are spontaneous and unconscious (Foulkes, 1977), we saw and interpreted Shiri’s reaction as resonance to both Miri’s state of being excluded from the group and the general situation in which one group is excluded from the stage and observes a dynamic occurrence without being able to express its voice. In the whole entity, the two friends constituted a “group voice” (Bion, 1961) of intergroup resonance, in which the observation group experienced exclusion from the stage into a dark room, in which it cannot be heard or have influence during half of the semester

In a different group, Nataly, one of the participants in the observation group, experienced an anxiety attack during the observation and was admitted to a hospital. A few weeks later, when Nataly’s group became an interpersonal group, we realized that, behind the mirror, Nataly had an intense reaction to a traumatic war experience shared by one of the participants. Nataly shared with the group a trauma she had experienced, which resembled in many ways the trauma that had come up in the previous interpersonal group when she experienced the anxiety attack behind the mirror. The connection Nataly experienced between the past trauma that had come up in the interpersonal group and the anxiety attack that had occurred while she was in the observation group led to a deeper emotional understanding of her traumatic experience and to mentalization of further experiences that were registered in the body on a nonverbal level. This understanding of Nataly’s physical reactions in the group led the participants to make further connections between the physical reactions they experienced as observers to contents and processes that occurred in the interpersonal group. The mirroring of different self-states through the other, and the actual mirror that sometimes serves to enhance these parts, constituted, in our view, resonance and strong mutual influence on participants from both sides of the mirror as well as on the group as a whole.

Another story that we heard in the final session served as yet another example of a resonance process. Tali, who started in the interpersonal group that later became the observation group, told of a touching process she went through in relation to her grief over her mother’s death. She started processing the grief during the interpersonal group sessions, and the process had been interrupted with the termination of the group and the shifting to observation. In the final shared session, Tali said that she continued the process behind the mirror through the grief stories shared by participants in the interpersonal group and her identification with them, up to the point that, in one of the sessions, she felt that she had managed to say goodbye to her mother following the observation of the interpersonal group. She reported experiencing a meaningful and important process that she was not able to undergo in other settings.

NEW MOVEMENT AND CONTINUING MOVEMENT

During the switching of the groups in the middle of the semester, there have been two parallel movements in the groups, which we called new movement and continuing movement. The new movement is the new group task that started with the transition of the observation group to the interpersonal group room, which set in motion a new process. The continuing movement held the entire dynamic process for both groups by continuing the process that started in the previous group.

In the second group, the observation group that became the interpersonal group, the two parallel movements were expressed, in that the first sessions were, at the same time, a new beginning and a continuation. This situation formed a unique stage of group development different from its normal course.

In the first interpersonal group, we could see some resemblance to the developmental stages described in the literature, except for the aforementioned preoccupation with the “twin sibling” that is not typical of the first stages of a group (Bennis & Shepard, 1956). However, the observation group that became the interpersonal group underwent a mixed stage of engagement, differentiation, and at times even individuation (Mackenzie & Livesley, 1983), due to the combination between new movement and continuing movement. On one hand, the group made an effort to develop “by the book,” that is, to become united, create trust and confidence, and seek resemblance and common ground between its members. On the other hand, there were issues and behaviors that are uncharacteristic of the beginning of group life, such as tardiness, no-shows, preoccupation with cultural differences (the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, for example), and sometimes even attempts to “jump in the water” and explore relationships in the first sessions.

During the session of the switch, one of the groups demonstrated well the “mixed” stage that includes simultaneous new movement and continuous movement. This group underwent a fascinating process when it united through the participants’ preoccupation with their names. One participant proposed an acquaintance activity in which each participant had to tell the meaning of her name. Almost all the participants talked about changing their first name from a name that expressed history and was no longer relevant to a name that suited them in the present. Others chose to keep two names—a past name and a present name. We interpreted this content as the group’s starting over, on one hand, and carrying historic baggage as an observer, on the other. We shared our interpretations with the participants to allow them to express their feelings regarding the “mixed stage” and to increase their awareness, as future group conductors, of the implications of this unique setting and of the course as a whole. In reaction, the participants started to express their feelings in the here and now and shared their worries regarding the future relationship with us, the group leaders, and their wishes to create a unique relationship that would be different from the one we had with the parallel group that they observed. In particular, they brought up situations that they observed in which they felt that specific participants were left unprotected, and they wondered whether, in similar circumstances, they would receive protection.

INTERMISSION AS TRANSITIONAL SPACE

In his book Play and Reality, Winnicott (1971) coined the term transitional space— an intermediate area of experience that resides between fantasy and reality and is neither external or internal to the individual but resides in the space between external and internal reality. This term describes one of the intermediate stages in normal child development, a space that is created between a mother and her infant in which transitional experiences and phenomena occur, including transitional objects. Examples of transitional phenomena are play and creative activity.

If we compare the group processes to the mother–infant relationship, then the dynamic work in the groups served as the relationship with the mother (Bion, 1961; Wells, 1980), whereas the short intermission between the sessions provided, in our view, a transitional space for the two groups, in which various transitional phenomena emerged. The intermission created an encounter between the two worlds—the “lit” and the “dark”—that resided in the parallel rooms and touched upon participants’ experiences that occurred in the area between fantasy and reality. One of the common transitional phenomena we encountered was the joint preparing of meals. Similarly to play and creation that were described by Winnicott (1971), our groups used the intermission to engage in a culinary activity, in which participants from both groups brought their finest dishes and united in a shared feast. The shared feasts served several functions for the twin groups: first, they allowed a connecting space between the groups that melted the barrier of the mirror that was placed between them. Second, we, the group conductors, were not invited to this space, and thus it was an opportunity for the “babies” to play without parental involvement. We interpreted the decision not to invite us to the feasts as the twins’ decision to “take care of themselves” without their parents who were not “satiating their hunger” and perhaps also as their way to express a protest against the authority.

In addition to the comforting and playful functions of the intermission, it was also an opportunity for the observers to express their voices and comment to their peers in the interpersonal group on things that they said or did during the sessions. The participants who were silent did not escape this feedback, and often their friends wondered why they had remained silent, despite our explicit request not to discuss group content outside the sessions.

This phenomenon of exchange between the different spaces and the two groups played a significant role in the group dynamics. Some of the groups even surpassed themselves and did not wait for the intermission but used WhatsApp to send instructions as to “what they should and shouldn’t talk about” during the course of the sessions. As a result, some of the participants chose to remain silent after receiving the “mirrors” from their peers during intermission, and others came back from intermission crying and told of difficult feedback they had received from their peers in the observation group. These situations posed new challenges for us, since the work with the participants who were hurt by their peers’ feedback was done in the silent presence of the latter behind the mirror, without them being able to respond. Still, there were incidents in which the observation group encouraged the participants to talk and helped them to dare to emerge from their avoidant and paralyzed states, when our and their fellow group members’ efforts had been unsuccessful.

TWO LEADERSHIP UNITS

The “dark” observation room was “held” by a third group leader, whose role was to explain and mediate to the observation group the processes that were taking place in the interpersonal group, while providing, at the same time, a holding function (Winnicott, 1971) for this group during the observation. As opposed to our leadership unit, which remained unchanged throughout the years, the leaders of the observation group changed every year, and they were usually younger and less experienced group

leaders. In most cases, they were recent graduates of our group leadership training program who we thought would be a good fit for this position. Over the years, we have noticed that parallel processes have been occurring between the groups and the different supervision units and that the observers’ experience of “exclusion from the lighted room to the dark room” was experienced, in a parallel process, by the leaders of the observation group as well. In retrospect, we contributed to this experience to some extent. Not only did the course structure create a division into two rooms and two different roles but we did not allow enough connection between the spaces during the meetings of the leaders before and between the group sessions. Many of the most intimate and meaningful meetings were actually our dyadic meetings after the group sessions, without the presence of the conductor of the observation group, who at this time led processing sessions with the observation group. One of our interpretations of this was that we have zealously protected our intimate relationship and had a difficult time including the leaders of the observation group in it. Perhaps, on some level, our way of coping with potential competition was projecting it onto a third party. In addition, the fact that most of them were our former students was another factor that allowed us to maintain our “superiority,” and we did not give the leaders of the observation group an experience of equality.

This condition created covert competition between the leaders of the observation group and ourselves over the role of the “good mother.” The leaders of the observation group envied us for being the “real group leaders” and for being in the front of the stage, whereas we envied them, since their position allowed them to be less frustrating and to provide the group with concrete knowledge and thus gain the sympathy of the participants. The competition was channeled to arguments over the interpretation of various group situations. For example, the leaders of the observation group sometimes suggested alternative interpretations to those we had offered the group or confronted us by identifying participants to whom we had not given enough attention. Of course, these arguments were carried out subtly and cautiously, due to our seniority differences.

In addition to the influence our relationship with the leaders of the observation group had on various interpretations, we felt that there were differences between the interpretations given “outside the room” and the interpretations given “in the room.” Sometimes, the interpretations of the leaders of the observation group shed light on new angles and points of view that we did not think of. Those became possible thanks to an external, reflecting point of view or to the recovery of materials that were split off in the whole group entity and were held in the observation group as a hidden group voice or, at times, a group secret that was hidden from us. Still, sometimes these “external” interpretations that came from persons who did not experience the dynamics in their bodies were not connected to the process that had occurred in the group. Even when the external point of view had been accurate, it interfered with our ability to surrender ourselves completely to the process, dive to its depths with our group, remain in areas of unknowing (Bion, 2004), and search for the meaning together from a position of mutual immersion in the process. In addition, we felt that the external point of view “thinned” the intensity of our countertransference (Stern, 1989) to the participants and added “foreign” contents that did not yet emerge from the group matrix. All these were sometimes experienced as interruptions to our primary maternal preoccupation (Winnicott, 1956) with the group.

DISCUSSION

In this article, we discussed phenomena that occur in parallel groups in organizations that provide group leadership training. We chose to analyze the unique phenomena that occur in these groups through a model of twin development.

The twin model emphasized that, in addition to the processes experienced by each group separately, we must consider the whole entity, which includes both groups and the leadership unit. In fact, in this system, we have observed three mutually influential units of analysis: mother–infant, mother–twin, and twin–twin. This consideration of the whole entity allowed us to understand processes that we doubt we would have realized from a separate observation of each group. Thus, for example, we came to understand why certain issues were not discussed in the second group (the group that started as an observation group and became an interpersonal group) and why this group began the sequence of developmental stages “from the middle.”

It is our impression that despite the difficulties aroused by the parallel structure, the twin groups served several functions for each other. First, the competition and jealousy between the groups contributed to each group’s development. Berman (2007) discussed the issue of jealousy in groups and argued that, despite the ancient viewing of jealousy as a negative, destructive feeling, jealousy also involves a potential for growth and development. Experimental studies from the field of game theory have also showed that competition between groups increases the cooperation inside each group (Bornstein, Erev, & Rosen, 1990; Erev, Bornstein, & Galili, 1994). Thus, for example, Bornstein and colleagues (1990) had students play a virtual computer game called Give Some Game. In this game, three players had to decide whether they would take an amount of money for themselves or share it with the members of their group. The researchers showed that in a normal situation, the dominant individual strategy was to take the money for themselves. However, after the researchers created a situation of intergroup competition, in which each member’s contribution was crucial to the victory of the group, the dominant strategy shifted to cooperation.

We also noticed that the jealousy and group competition created a strong striving for uniqueness and pain over the group leaders’ preference of one group over the other, a comparison that sometimes interfered with authentic, spontaneous group discourse and thus impeded the development of intimacy in the group. In addition, the “sibling shadow” of the first group hovered over the second group as a memory from the observation room, and the desire “not to be like them” prevented spontaneous and free movement in the working process. On the other hand, the desire to become equal to the twin group and to erase their differences increased their efforts and eventually led to group development and created a strong working motivation. The explicit work with expressions of sibling shadow allowed participants to have true contact with their shadowed self-states and to work on their integration.

Moreover, the mere experience of being split into two groups, with one group sitting in a lighted room and the other in a dark room, allowed encounter with other arenas of splitting and exclusion, such as majority–minority and center–periphery relations, both inside (“popular” and “unpopular,” group statuses) and outside the room (Jewish–Arab, interethnic, gender, and secular–orthodox relations).

Another contribution of the parallel group resulted, in our view, from the universality they allowed each other. The experience of universality is a significant therapeutic factor in group therapy and constitutes one of its main advantages over individual therapy (Yalom & Leszcz, 2006). We felt that just as universality constitutes a therapeutic force for an individual who takes part in a group, this force also acts on an intergroup level, that is, the presence of a twin group that shares similar issues allows the other group to experience universality. Often, the comparison to the other group was also used for purposes of “relaxation” and feeling that “we’re not the only ones who go through this.” This was true, for instance, in situations of silence and no-shows, which aroused fear and embarrassment in the group.

What implications can be derived from this article for other parallel groups, even groups that work in parallel but are not conducted in a shared space? We believe that the point of view we have offered, which emphasizes the mutual influence of the two groups in the whole systemic context that we call “the whole entity,” allows better holding and understanding of intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamic processes in each of the groups, as well as deciphering of conscious and unconscious processes in the system as a whole.

We would like to argue that the ignoring of the “whole situation,” in which a whole year is split into parallel groups and develops as a whole and split entity, at the same time, creates many blind spots for group leaders who focus on the dynamics of a single group. We propose a “binocular vision” (Bion, 2012) in the work with parallel groups, in which one eye focuses on the intragroup process, while the other eye observes the whole entity, which includes the parallel groups and the leadership unit.

From this point of view, several practical recommendations for leaders of parallel groups are derived. First, it is important to be aware, in any given moment, of the two groups and not only of the specific group that is led at a certain stage. The mere awareness of both groups’ existence and their mutual influences can explain many processes that occur in each group.

In addition to awareness, leadership of parallel groups requires subtle movement between working with the “whole entity” and working with each group separately—leadership that helps each group establish itself as a separate entity, on one hand, and holds both groups together, on the other hand. Such leadership would sometimes deviate from “by-the-book” leadership, due to its unique challenges, especially when the leadership needs to be adjusted to the developmental stages of the group. As we have described in this article, the developmental stages of parallel groups often seem different from the developmental stages of single groups, and thus it is important to adjust the leadership to this unique development. For instance, in the first stage, the group is usually focused on the authority and not on the peer group (Bennis & Shepard, 1956). However, parallel groups are also preoccupied with siblings, and this should be addressed and not viewed only as an “escape” from the central task of preoccupation with authority. The fact that the second group “begins from the middle” also requires leadership that is adjusted to the developmental stage of the group as a whole, in parallel to the establishment of trust and cohesion in the new group.

This unique setting requires defining clear rules and boundaries for the shared work of the two groups, such as dos and don’ts in communication during intermission. However, deviations from these rules constitute valuable material for psychodynamic work. Rutan and Stone (2001) wrote that one of the important roles of the group leader is to manage the boundaries, which includes holding and containing the setting. In this role, he or she must navigate between two equally important tasks: maintaining the boundaries while helping the participants explore, on a psychodynamic level, all the occurrences related to the boundaries of the setting and their attitudes toward them.

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