Read Online The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom, Molyn Leszcz - Free Book Online

maximal pressure on the member to continue, regardless of the person’s best interests. When members arranged contacts outside the group meeting, Nancy became anxious at the threat to the integrity of the group. Sometimes members felt smothered by Nancy. They drew away and expressed their objections to her phoning them at home to check on their absence or lateness. Their insistence that she lighten her demands on them simply aggravated Nancy’s anxiety, causing her to increase her protective efforts.
    Although she longed for comfort and safety in the group, it was, in fact, the very appearance of these unsettling vicissitudes that made it possible for her major conflict areas to become exposed and to enter the stream of the therapeutic work.
     
    Not only does the small group provide a social microcosm in which the maladaptive behavior of members is clearly displayed, but it also becomes a laboratory in which is demonstrated, often with great clarity, the meaning and the dynamics of the behavior. The therapist sees not only the behavior but also the events triggering it and sometimes, more important, the anticipated and real responses of others.
    The group interaction is so rich that each member’s maladaptive transaction cycle is repeated many times, and members have multiple opportunities for reflection and understanding. But if pathogenic beliefs are to be altered, the group members must receive feedback that is clear and usable. If the style of feedback delivery is too stressful or provocative, members may be unable to process what the other members offer them. Sometimes the feedback may be premature—that is, delivered before sufficient trust is present to soften its edge. At other times feedback can be experienced as devaluing, coercive, or injurious. 44 How can we avoid unhelpful or harmful feedback? Members are less likely to attack and blame one another if they can look beyond surface behavior and become sensitive to one another’s internal experiences and underlying intentions.† Thus empathy is a critical element in the successful group. But empathy, particularly with provocative or aggressive clients, can be a tall order for group members and therapists alike.†
    The recent contributions of the intersubjective model are relevant and helpful here. 45 This model poses members and therapists such questions as: “How am I implicated in what I construe as your provocativeness? What is my part in it?” In other words, the group members and the therapist continuously affect one another. Their relationships, their meaning, patterns, and nature, are not fixed or mandated by external influences, but jointly constructed. A traditional view of members’ behavior sees the distortion with which members relate events—either in their past or within the group interaction—as solely the creation and responsibility of that member. An intersubjective perspective acknowledges the group leader’s and other members’ contributions to each member’s here-and-now experience—as well as to the texture of their entire experience in the group.
    Consider the client who repeatedly arrives late to the group meeting. This is always an irritating event, and group members will inevitably express their annoyance. But the therapist should also encourage the group to explore the meaning of that particular client’s behavior. Coming late may mean “I don’t really care about the group,” but it may also have many other, more complex interpersonal meanings: “Nothing happens without me, so why should I rush?” or “I bet no one will even notice my absence—they don’t seem to notice me while I’m there,” or “These rules are meant for others, not me.”
    Both the underlying meaning of the individual’s behavior and the impact of that behavior on others need to be revealed and processed if the members are to arrive at an empathic understanding of one another. Empathic capacity is a key component of emotional intelligence 46