ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how experiential dynamic therapies, specifically Intensive Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy (IE-DP), was applied in a group setting within the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, specifically the School of Psychiatry of Milan University, by two co-therapists, Silvia Landra and Ferruccio Osimo. The therapeutic process by means of the three main dynamic activities: defence restructuring, anxiety regulation, and emotional maieutics. Patients tended to learn how to apply IE-DP techniques first in interactions with others, becoming “co-therapists”, drawing fellow patients’ attention to what was important therapeutically. Therapists working within an IE-DP framework in a group setting may need to focus particularly on helping patients to recognise and relinquish defences of intellectualisation, rationalisation, trivialisation, and covering up with humour. The chapter concludes by the group IE-DP approach yielded encouraging results for resistant patients with Superego pathology, and that the group setting lends itself to Self- and Other-restructuring.
