ABSTRACT
The open-ended group has been conceptualized by some in the group-work literature as ranging in characteristic from a series of discrete meetings to one closely resembling a closed group with only occasional changes in membership (Galinsky and Schopler 1989; Schopler and Galinsky 1984). For this discussion, it has been conceptualized somewhere in between the two-as a series of group meetings to which people come and go over time but with enough encounters among the various members that at least some of the members develop a degree of familiarity with one another. Implications for practice as outlined in the following section, therefore, are based on the assumption that each groupe du jour is composed of some members who already know one another and some who do not; some who have attended the previous meeting and some who are returning after an absence; some who will return to the next or future meetings, and some who will not.
