ABSTRACT
Group therapy is a mode of treatment in which several clients come together with one or two facilitators to create a safe atmosphere in which growth can take place. Typical tasks for group therapists include facilitating communication, ensuring emotional and physical safety, and utilizing intergroup dynamics to facilitate growth. Practitioners utilizing a systems perspective have additional tasks that include helping clients to: clearly identify roles they played within their families, examine family rules and dynamics that mediate their behavior, and develop appropriate enactments within the group that will help them test new roles. This chapter presents several approaches such as systemic group therapy approach, dance/movement therapy, family systems approach, the modern group analytic approach, transactional analysis approach, cognitive-behavioral approach, group-as-a-whole approach, living dance approach, and group-analytical model approach. From a transactional analysis perspective, two things such as protection and permission become important at the moment a person makes a personal disclosure indicating feelings or attractions to another group member.
