The therapist's anxiety and resistance to group therapy

When therapists contemplate starting groups, consider placing an individual patient within an existing group, or respond to the group reconfigurations when members are added or replaced, it raises their anxieties and resistances. Under these circumstances, the therapist must contend with many intersubjective factors: dread, fear, and idealization of groups; contagion and amplification of psychological phenomena; absorption in the group mentality; magnification of the therapist's centrality and importance; exposure and disturbance of existing relationships, and utilization of one's own emerging and evolving thoughts, feelings, and fantasies, along with the group's. Therapists learn about themselves and their groups by reviewing their countertransference, being alert to possible enactments, and listening to their patients, whose anxieties and resistances to group often reflect their own.     

The minimal group paradigm: Categorization into two versus three groups

The minimal group paradigm (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy and Flament, 1971) has been influential in the study of intergroup relations. Thus far, most minimal group experiments have divided the subjects either into two groups, or have categorized them on two separate dichotomous dimensions in cross-categorization experiments. This study examines the minimal group paradigm using three distinct and independent groups. Comparison of the results with three minimal groups with those of a baseline two-group experiment shows that with a three-group structure there is no significant ingroup bias. It is suggested that the two-group minimal group experiment shows ingroup bias because subjects access a dichotomous categorization, and that this dichotomous categorization primes a competitive orientation. A two-group context may be particularly efective in evoking an ‘us versus them’ contrast. Self-categorization as a group member is more likely to occur in the presence of two groups whereas three minimal groups renders an ‘us–them’ contrastive orientation less salient. The absence of intergroup discrimination found in the present minimal group study may be limited to the behaviour of minimal or artificially created groups. In the real world of intergroup relations discrimination towards multiple outgroups is a well-known phenomenon. While this study should be regarded as only preliminary research, further elaboration and specification of the conditions under which multiple group contexts may hinder intergroup discrimination is required.     

Social support,organizational characteristics,psychological well-being,and group appraisal in three self-help group populations

This study examined the relationship of three social support and three organizational variables to two well-being and two group appraisal variables among 144 members of Compassionate Friends, Multiple Sclerosis, and Overeaters Anonymous self-help groups. An anonymous questionnaire was the major research instrument. Receiving social support was not significantly related to depression or anxiety but was positively related to perceived group benefits and group satisfaction. Providing social support and friendship were each positively related to one well-being and one group appraisal variable. Bidirectional supporters (i.e., individuals high on both receiving and providing support) reported more favorable well-being and group appraisal than Receivers, Providers, and Low Supporters. At the group level of analysis (n = 15 groups), groups with higher levels of role differentiation, greater order and organization, and in which leaders were perceived as more capable contained members who reported more positive well-being and group appraisal. The implications for future research and professional consultation to self-help groups are discussed.     

Studies involving fathers: Subject refusal, attrition and sampling bias

The reported rates of subject refusal and attrition are reviewed in those studies where data were collected directly from fathers. Only 34 per cent of such studies report on subject refusal rates and 36 per cent on attrition rates. Few studies comment on or give information that would allow an assessment to be made of sampling bias arising from subject refusal and attrition. Nevertheless, studies reporting subject refusal and attrition suggest that fathers are no more difficult to recruit than mothers and that a variety of factors, individually and in combination, may have some impact on recruitment. These include the type of commitment required, the techniques of recruitment used and whether studies are hospital, home or laboratory based. However, if biases due to subject refusal and attrition are to be identified and avoided, studies need to be more open in providing information about the characteristics of refusing and participating subjects. To encourage this, some new data are presented, suggesting a number of trends: (1) extended personal contacts with potential subjects may minimize subject refusal and attrition; (2) attrition may be somewhat higher in middle-class families and families with sons.     

Treatment rights of the mentally retarded: The cost of refusal

The cost of the mentally retarded client's rights to refuse treatment, in both monetary and human terms, varies under different legal/clinical circumstances. The process of placing severely retarded clients into the community with poor or no supervision, especially those who refuse or are denied treatment, can result in devastating costs for the client and others. The complexities associated with mental retardation require sophisticated treatment considerations. Moreover, these clients often need guidance in making meaningful decisions relevant to their quality of life. In order for this process to produce desirable results, for both the mentally retarded client and society, in general, a balance must be struck between the legal and clinical factors involved.     

Improving work motivation and performance in brainstorming groups: The effects of three group goal-setting strategies

An experiment was conducted with 30 groups (n = 120) solving brainstorming tasks under four different group goal conditions: do your best (DYB), directive group goal setting (DGGS), participative group goal setting (PGGS), and PGGS in combination with individual goal setting (PGGS + IGS). As expected, all groups with specific and difficult group goals performed better than DYB control groups. It is hypothesized that these positive effects of group goal setting on brainstorming performance arise because group goal setting counteracts motivation losses such as social loafing. In addition, group goal setting should promote motivation gains arising from social compensation and related cognitive processes, in particular high identification with the group. Consistent with this hypothesis, it was found that group goal setting increased team identification, the readiness to compensate for other weak group members, the value of group success, and the value of group failure. Mediation analysis also indicated that concern to avoid group failure was partly responsible for performance improvements. Finally, no large differences were found between PGGS + IGS and PGGS or DGGS. On this basis group goal setting can be considered a robust strategy for improving work motivation and brainstorming performance in groups.     

Early food refusal: Infant and family characteristics

This study compared infants who developed food refusal during the first year of life with a healthy control group concerning feeding, growth pattern, family situation, and infant behavioral characteristics. Infants with food refusal had a lower relative weight at inclusion in the study and at follow-up at the age of 2 years. Food refusal was also associated with weaning problems, parental reports of lower food consumption, a higher incidence of breast-feeding, a higher frequency of meals, psychosocial problems in the family, less positive perceptions of parenting, infant difficultness, and problematic behaviors. The findings have implications for identification and understanding of factors related to early food refusal.     

Islam,secularism and danger: a reconsideration of the link between religiosity,radicalism and rebellion in Central Asia

In equating political Islam with radicalism and rebellion against the state, security analysts make a number of assumptions about the religious, the secular and security. Within the Central Asian context, the discursive fusing of religiosity with radicalism produces a bogeyman in which national and foreign governments, although offering quite different countermeasures, have found a common enemy. This securitisation of Islam distorts our understanding of these movements whose approach is seldom ‘radical’ in form. We identify six claims which are axiomatic to both international and national secularist security discourses with respect to Islam in the region. We then demonstrate that popular Muslim discourse and political practice – in the findings of an original survey and ethnographic research in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – provide a more complex picture than that found in elite discourses. While the six propositions can be refuted in objective terms, they remain relevant to how the problem is subjectively produced and reproduced in elite discourse and practice. As particular secularist claims about Islam, they inform national and international policies towards religious freedom and Islamic movements across Central Asia. Many of these themes appear in weaker and ambiguous forms in popular discourse and continue to limit Muslim political participation.