ABSTRACT
Therapists and patients tend to attribute difficulties in therapy groups to "the difficult patient" without appreciating how they themselves contribute to the construction, the needs it serves, and the potential value of such patients to the group. Group leaders, for a variety of reasons, bring into their groups patients who are inappropriate for group therapy. Such patients are branded with the difficult-patient label. Some difficult patients stay difficult despite the best efforts of the rest of the group and the leader. Sometimes the clinical condition of the difficult patient deteriorates. Group patients are people who have agreed to put thoughts and feelings into words, not actions; to let other people have an effect on them and be willing to talk openly and honestly about those effects; and to work actively in the group on the problems that brought them to therapy.
