Tobias Brocher
Here, Tobias Brocher is representative for a whole group of psychoanalysts (V. v. Weizsaecher, M. Balint, W Bion, S. H. Foulkes, P. Fuerstenau and others), who linked, from the late fifties of the last century, depth and social-psychological viewpoints. Out of this emerged a variety of creative works and research programmes with groups.
Brocher and his colleagues allowed themselves to be guided by the insight, that groups cannot be understood as the sum of the individuals. It was important to them to develop concepts which made the independent existence of the group understandable and, therefore, also influenceable. Only in this way could some of those effects, which the group has on an individual group member (and not on other group members!), be traced.
The development of role- and position concepts – the understanding of the interaction between leadership and group members, the tools for analysing the relationship networks, patterns and the possibilities to overcome conflicts in groups – these are just a selection of topics which enable fundamental insights and new forms of handling groups. One of the most important shared views within these concepts is the role of feedback with regard to the further development of groups.