Why Study Group Therapy?

Headnote

ABSTRACT

Group therapy training is highly valuable for the overall professional practice of psychotherapy. Learning to be a group therapist means learning about shame, resistance, fears of engulfment and abandonment, maintaining a self in relation to others, promoting empathic connection, strong affects in the moment, multiple experiences of the same interaction or event, and group dynamics. These concepts are highly relevant to all clinical work and other aspects of professional life. Training in group therapy should place greater emphasis on its broader applicability.

WHY STUDY GROUP THERAPY?

More than 30 years ago I attended my first American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) annual meeting and began an educational adventure that has governed the way I practice psychotherapy. My practice is largely individual and couple therapy along with supervision and teaching; group therapy per se is a small part of my professional week. Nevertheless, psychodynamic group therapy training has been the single most powerful influence on my overall professional practice. Although there are many avenues to competence as a psychotherapist, I believe that the value of group therapy training cannot be overestimated. After all, the heart of psychotherapy is interpersonal connection and what better setting to learn about that than a group?

Unfortunately, the relevance of group therapy training to a psychotherapist's overall professional life has been sorely neglected. This shortsightedness is particularly problematic as national and regional group therapy societies seek to attract and retain new members. Clinicians typically stop their group therapy training when they no longer lead groups, and students see the training as applicable only to leading therapy groups. Those in teaching settings such as hospitals, graduate schools, and training programs encounter considerable competition for training time, and group therapy training often gets short shrift. In this brief report I will describe the many ways in which group therapy training has benefited me far beyond proficiency in therapy group leadership. My hope is to encourage group therapists-from those who teach group therapy to those just beginning their training-to realize the broader applications of this valuable experience.

I refer here specifically to process-oriented group therapy, not because of a bias against other types of group work, but because I believe it is the knowledge about dynamic and systemic aspects of group therapy that...