ABSTRACT

Group psychotherapy, in its ongoing search for understanding the patient and the group, often borrows from other disciplines to formulate its theoretical framework and practical methodology. One excellent source to draw from is neuroscience, since it seeks correlations between the brain, emotion, and behaviour, and especially now, because it has begun to investigate matters pertaining to social interactions. The implications of mirror neurons and systems for group psychotherapy are explored in that spirit of creative understanding rather than offering hard and fast conclusions. Research studies on mirror neurons and other aspects of the “social brain” are converging to provide a stronger “natural sciences” foundation for systems-based group psychotherapy than ever before. The development of new understanding of psychotherapy groups based on mirror neurons and related developments in neuroscience requires a “leap of faith” in which one becomes willing to reconsider some assumptions about how to run groups.