e first clinician to conduct psychoanalytically oriented groups. Wender began in the late 1920s, and formed his techniques and position more out of necessity than anything else. He began his sessions with lecture material, later opening them up to comment and interaction (Kaplan and Sadock, eds., 1971, pp. 4 31). Thus, Wender set the stage for several aspects of modern psychotherapy, and indeed, many of his techniques have been incorporated into other methodological frameworks.
One additional, and important, consideration must be maintained regarding group therapy. In each type or method used, there is a certain cultural orientation or bias. Some maintain that most of these theoretical considerations can be clustered around Freud's three approaches in his work, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Freud, 1921, 1955). Essentially, this minds that ephemeral groups are somewhat deficient in social structure and intellectual ability, at least as compared to more stable, long term groups. Members of long term group supplement their own frustrations and insecurities with the transference of leader superego identification with ego identification and peer identification with object love (Halperin, ed., 1989). Additionally, Freud's third approach to groups as both symbolic and cultural. According to Freud, all groups are but revivals of the primal horde, a prehistoric band of brothers that revolted against their despotic father, and replaced him with oligarchical law (Freud, 1921, 1955). This helps explain why humans gravitate toward groups, as well as their inclination to share both mythic models and hypothetical fantasies, both of which help insure a certain degree of commonality and suggests in this type of therapeutic paradigm (Ethan, 1978).
Thus, an important part of group therapy involves the transferences in groups, posited also by Freud, but expanded by others. Freud's conception of transference in groups is com...