Family and Group Therapy

The field of family and group therapy is one of both great interest and great need within contemporary American society. Daily, in newspapers, magazines, journals, television, and the myriad of other parts of the media, one is besieged with the depressing, and often fatalistic, glut of information on the crisis facing society. In addition, twentieth century society becomes ever more complicated and obtuse. This is the era of the information glut, the era of too many people and not enough time, and the era of not enough love. Many of the therapeutic techniques offered under the rubric of group therapy, however, have been shown to be quite effective in alleviating some of the problems faced in the modern world, and offer a variety of approaches to the situations within contemporaneous society (Polster and Polster, 1973).

This paper will provide an overview of some of the major techniques and methodological concerns surrounding a variety of approaches to group therapy. Some of the various models discussed will be the TGroup, Encounter therapy, Selfhelp, Gestalt, Analytic, Primal, and Marathon. Within each of these approaches, the paper will briefly look at their major techniques and approaches, and will analyze the basic effectiveness of each. Finally, the paper will conclude with an assessment of group therapy as a whole, and will suggest some directions for future research.

In general, the approach to group psychotherapy began with a Boston internist, Joseph Pratt

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of group, though, it is necessary to look at a type of therapy sometimes confused with the encounter. Marathon groups, in fact, are sometimes thought of as encounter groups. This is partially due to their compacted timing and intensity. The idea of a marathon group began with a 1963 sensitivity training group which met and extended over an entire weekend. This experience led many therapists to apply the idea to working with groups. In fact, the majority of people who use the marathon approach stress the immediacy of the goal, the socalled "here and now approach." There are certainly breaks for rest, sleep, and eating, but the effort is made to confront defense mechanisms immediately and dissolve those defenses through very emotional and intense experiences, with no introspection or insight into the inner thoughts about these behaviors (Mullen and Rosenbaum, 1978). The broad type of group, the encounter group, has been described by various sources, all of which point to a specific technique based on a method that encourages group cohesiveness and bonding. In the words of one theorist: Encounter is a method of human relating based on openness and honesty, selfawareness, selfresponsibility, awareness of the body, attentio

Category: Psychology - F