ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the issues of technique in group psychotherapy for borderline and narcissistic patients. The helpful lines of interpretation and the management of non-interpretative relationships are dimly understood and prescriptions so contradictory that they cannot be applied to specific cases with any reliability. The therapeutic process can be geared to allow idealization to develop within the group. With that plan in mind, the therapist's task centers on avoiding interference with the emergence of that archaic need and simultaneously observing the other members' response to idealization. The chapter examines unsolved problems in the area of patients with different plans for how they will be helped and the situation when contradictory plans are present. An initial step toward developing an alliance is to empathize with the surprise and hurt the patients experience as a result of their behavior before examining the source or the process leading up to a particular behavior.
