ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews a number of groups as they are found in ordinary life. It describes the features of the group-analytic situation which correspond to the psychoanalytic situation. The chapter aims to what extent and in what ways the essential requirements of psychotherapy are met with in the group. It also reviews the ways in which the two situations correspond and ways in which they differ. The chapter illustrates the model of the psychoanalytic situation, the character of a psychotherapeutic situation and more specifically, of an analytic psychotherapeutic situation. Analysis of groups shows that group occupations, like the activities of passengers on a boat, serve as a protective screen, a defence against intimate personal interaction. The main activity of the analyst is interpretation, especially of the patient's defences. With respect to participation in interpersonal and intra-psychical processes, there is the analyst's particular attitude which characterizes this specific therapeutic situation.
