ABSTRACT
Group therapy became an accepted mode of treatment largely because of the putative efficiency of treating many patients with only one or two therapists in one room at one time, and these features are salient reasons for its continued use. Aside from its practicality, however, the efficacy of group treatment lies in the opportunity it offers for a unique kind of learning that can contribute significantly to personal growth and change. While group experience is not a re-creation of the members’ family, participants arrive bearing and wearing their history. Members’ customary ways of seeking comfort and viewing the world are described variously as introjects, organizing principles, pathological accommodation, or learned attachment strategies, to name a few. No matter what terms are used, however, it is clear that being in a group elicits each member’s idiosyncratic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior and offers possibilities for experiencing new ways of being in the world. The opportunity to observe and facilitate this process widens the group clinician’s diagnostic and therapeutic armamentarium.
