ABSTRACT
Group psychotherapy can contain the disturbance of somepatients in a way that individual psychotherapy sometimescannot. The presence of other group members brings breadth, depth and often creativity, but also explicit boundaries and active challenging when required. The wealth of resources available in the group setting can provide a capacity to contain even the most fragile and volatile patients. Glasser’s concept of the core complex dictates that patients tend to feel either overwhelmed or abandoned by those with whom they are intimately involved (Glasser, 1979, 1992). For some patients, the intensity of the one-to-one setting can be overwhelming. For these patients, treatment in a group can help to dissipate the intensity of the therapeutic encounter so that it is more manageable.
