ABSTRACT
We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot Four Quartets
INTRODUCTION
Practitioners have long struggled to deal with clients whose behavior seems to be disruptive to group process. The angry client, the client who challenges the worker and the group, the verbally abusive client, and the negative leader who constantly devalues the group experiences create an atmosphere of intimidation and often a sense of helplessness and powerlessness of the group that interfere with the work of the group. Similarly, in perhaps a more subtle way, clients avoid painful but necessary exploration by withdrawing, monopolizing, ruminating and obsessing, intellectualizing, minimizing, rationalizing, and by demonstrating a multitude of other defensive behaviors. Workers, too, have difficulty confronting certain problematic material, those areas that may stir countertransferential issues for them with members or other workers as these influence group process. Workers may avoid difficult topics by focusing only on positive subjects or by problem solving rather than exploring difficult or painful material. They also may collude with
clients by focusing on minutiae or details, by intellectualizing rather than approaching emotional content, and by educating about the process rather than really engaging in the process, thus keeping away from areas that neither clients nor workers wish to address.
