The demonstration group: a tool for observing group process and leadership style

The Benefits of Group Therapy Observation for Therapists-in-Training

The authors contend, based on a survey of group therapy trainees, that observing an ongoing psychotherapy group in vivo provides an exceptional learning opportunity. Clinicians often experience resistance and anxiety regarding therapy group leadership, and group therapy is notoriously challenging to teach. Trainees consistently described the Group Observation course as one of the most effective training experiences that they have had. The observation group model mitigates many concerns that trainees have about group leadership and inspires enthusiasm and confidence for leading groups. Group observers learned vital group leadership skills, most notably: the ability to bear affect and trust the group process, the ability to follow and use group themes, metaphors, and underlying dynamics, and the ability to highlight attachment themes, work in the here and now, and promote immediacy.

Boundary Identification in Experiential Groups as a Tool for Practice, Research, and Training

Psychological boundaries are an integral part of group processes. A novel evaluation method presented in this article seeks to reveal chronological boundary changes. Through the application of this method, the triangular relationships among the group process, the content, and the frame of reference are identified. A unique feature of this computer-assisted (Atlas.ti) analysis is that boundary shifts are tracked and quantified, allowing for specific qualitative exploration. The innovative use of qualitative thematic content analysis shown here, combined with the quantification of elements of the group process, can possibly provide group leaders with a framework for the conceptualization and identification of boundary movement in the group.

The invited presenter: outrageousness and outrage

I describe aspects of a multimodal presentation sponsored by a professional organization of group psychotherapists, entailing lecture and discussion, a small demonstration or fishbowl group, and a large group experience. As the invited presenter, I was being counted on to attract attendees, to stimulate and maintain their interest, and to draw enthusiasm to the host organization and its future conferences. This required, in short order, promoting cohesion, establishing norms, and creating a safe enough culture to embrace challenge, to take risks, to learn, and to seek help. Events occurring in both the larger and smaller groups were to be utilized for the benefit of the individuals and the groups themselves, to make the experience interesting and sufficiently compelling, to teach the basic principles promised by the conference's theme, and to demonstrate technique. Dysfunction or negative consequences were to be avoided. My mode of leadership was perceived by some as positive if not outrageous, but for others it just provoked outrage. Perhaps such reactions are to be expected whenever a leader challenges a group to experience and think in new ways. I tried to utilize the ensuring controversy to illustrate the conference's topic: loving, hating, and curiosity-group processes of resistance, rebellion, and refusal.