ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the attitudes and understandings that serve as a foundation for the therapist's interventions. The attitudes, based on an understanding of therapeutic process, and the group leader's theoretical orientation, are conveyed by his or her bread-and-butter stance. The chapter focuses on affect and narcissistic vulnerability, and with it the facilitation of what they call "vulnerable moments", can greatly enable the deepening of the therapeutic process in group psychotherapy. The vulnerable involvement of the group leader in the therapeutic relationship also plays a key role in promoting change. It explains impasses and the concept of focus as a bridge between theory and practice. The concept of vulnerable moments and a self-psychological/intersubjective emphasis on the processing of previously walled-off, painful affect provide a background understanding of what needs to be deepened in the therapeutic process and what leads to mutative change and the capacity for affect regulation and containment.
