ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the therapeutic benefits that may accrue owing to the addition of a male co-facilitator to a men's group that has always been facilitated by a female facilitator. It draws on clinical case material as it emerged during the termination session in which the group therapy participants reviewed their therapeutic gains, as part of the annual group closure ritual, of this long-term psychodynamically-orientated men’s group. Emotion-focused theory portrays men as capable of inhibiting their usual stereotypical competitive and task-orientated behaviour to do ‘emotion work’. When the group facilitator is therapeutically engaged in the group process, he or she becomes potentially available to be internalised and emotionally appropriated as a transference object for creative personal transformation of group members. Psychodynamic theory is especially useful a resource to explain the function of the father in the development and maintenance of the manhood identity of the son.
