GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY

Most social activities take place in groups. Individuals act as representatives of groups (e.g. class, race, age, sex, nation..ect.). The forma use of groups in medical treatment developed in the 20th century.

Schneidlinger (1982) classify groups according to :

1- members and how selected

2- Specific aims

3- Theory or ideology regarding the aetiology of problems as well as the group process

4- Specific techniques employed

5- Professional training and work experience of practitioner

He differentiates the following types of "people-helping groups":-

1. Group Psychotherapy:

Run by a mental health professional who assess each member and uses the emotional interaction in the group to ameliorate personality dysfunction .

2. Therapeutic Groups: Not run by trained staff. They include activity groups , community meetings, occupational therapy group.

3. Human development and training groups

4. Self-help groups

Slavson, The "father" of American group psychotherapy thought five therapeutic factors were important in groups: transference, catharsis, insight, reality testing, sublimation and resistance. Slavosn divided groups into:

1) DIRECTIVE GROUPS:

Inspirational , didactic, recreational ..etc. The leader actively guides towards specific activities, free association is at minimum. This results i corrected attitudes and values, imporved self-awareness, and a more wholesome view of self and world. The aim is to support, helping the participants to deal more adequately with specific personal problems. The first therapeutic groups of TB patients that Joseph Pratt held were of this sort.

2) PSYCHOTHERAPY GROUPS:

A. ACTIVITY GROUPS:

Slavson run activity groups for adolescents. Moreno , a pupil of Adler , used drama with teenagers in 1930's and this developed into drama therapy.

B. ANALYTIC GROUPS:

The earliest of these conducted individual psychoanalysis in a group setting: the individual in the group perspective . During the WW2 interest in the therapuetic potential of groups stemmed from the rehabilitation of shell-shocked soldiers in special units at Northfields Hopsital ( now Hollymoor) and Belmont Hopsital ( now Henderson) .

Bion stressed the " group as a whole" perspective : the group at the expense of its individual members . He founded the group programme at the Tavistock Clinic . He suggested that when groups fear for their dissolution the cease to work at their appointed task ( overcoming emotional problems) and become preoccupied by " basic assumptions" of survival : Dependency, Fight or Flight and Pairing.

Ezriel and Whitaker developed the group as a whole approach (GAW) further . When the group get "stuck" in the face of a "focal conflict" between "disturbing motive" and a "reactive motive" , a solution is adopted which may be either facilitating ( move things on) or restrictive ( lead to "stuckness").

The GAW approach developed in the USA under the influence of the gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin whose "field theory" led to the practice of "T" ( for training) groups as means of self-understanding.