Using Popular Film to Teach Multicultural Counseling: A Constructivist Approach

The use of popular film as an experiential teaching tool in multicultural counselor education has been well documented. However, existing research has been limited. The purpose of this study is to implement a unique pedagogic intervention using popular films and to study how counseling students experience the activity as part of their multicultural counseling training. The researchers utilized the popular films Crash and Precious to stimulate student dialogue and reflection on topics pertaining to race, culture, privilege, and social justice. The findings indicate that popular films, when implemented in conjunction with reflective learning activities, are effective in promoting students’ multicultural and social justice counseling competencies. Participants reported that the pedagogic activity was effective in bringing to life the multicultural course concepts and stimulating difficult but necessary conversations about race, ethnicity, privilege, and power. Finally, implications of this study could further inform the field of multicultural counselor education.     

Predicting Compliance in Group CBT Using the Group Therapy Questionnaire

This study examined the clinical applicability of the Group Therapy Questionnaire (GTQ) for identifying individuals at risk of poor attendance in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) groups for depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Participants (n = 80) completed the GTQ prior to their involvement in one of five types of CBT groups. Participants’ attendance was recorded by the group therapists. Findings revealed that patients’ expectations of group were associated with attendance. Level of interpersonal difficulty, health issues, and drug and alcohol use—as assessed by the GTQ—were not associated with attendance. A shorter version of the GTQ with questions tapping expectations of group participation would provide a valuable screening tool to aid clinicians in identifying clients at risk for low attendance.     

Group Processes in Family Therapy: a Psychoanalytic Approach

This paper describes a model of family therapy that draws on experiences and theories of psychoanalysis as applied to individuals and groups. It suggests concepts that help to understand and work with the family as a system. A brief example is given to illustrate the effort to engage with the patients' immediate feelings in the session in relation to each other and the therapist.     

Parent Education in a Group Therapy Setting

This article responds to K. Roy MacKenzie's Presidential Address, which concerns the challenge of mental health reform as it effects group psychotherapy. Issues of the time-effective use of groups for specific patient populations are explored. The need for practice guidelines that benefit from outcome studies is emphasized. In addition, the efforts of the National Registry of Certified Group Psychotherapists to support group therapy within the current managed care environment are explicated.     

Fighting Igor: Exposing and Resisting the Irrational Side Using Cognitive-Behavioral Principles in Group Therapy

A visual cognitive behavioral framework developed, with indirect literature support, from the author's practice depicts a polarized conflict between a rational side and an irrational side, named Igor. Each side's characteristics, reasoning, and methods of dealing with thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in panic/phobic disorders are described. Techniques of a group therapy approach include members sharing symptoms, fears, and escape behaviors; the therapist providing corrective information and role playing of each side; and therapist/members monitoring and supporting behavioral homework. Outcome measures appear to support desired simplicity, palatability, efficiency, and effectiveness.     

The Small and the Ordinary: The Daily Practice of a Postmodern Narrative Therapy

In this article, I contrast assumptions of a modernist worldview and a postmodern worldview as they relate to clinical practice. Two exercises are described that help therapists develop insight into and practice with the kind of thinking that is consistent with a postmodern narrative clinical practice. Particular attention is paid to the ways that even the small and the ordinary — single words, single gestures, minor asides, trivial actions — can provide opportunities for generating new meanings. Five concepts that I routinely use in my professional and personal life and that are consistent with a postmodern narrative practice — discourse, externalizing the internalized discourse, exceptions, power as the means to produce a consensus, and characteristics of narrative — are illustrated.     

Group Therapy in Israel

This paper is an analysis of the group therapy and the group work phenomena in Israel as a microcosm of the Israeli society and culture. We discuss the structure of Israeli society and its features, identify the key norms and myths that express the social unconscious, and pinpoint events that mark critical points of change. Drawing on these, the paper then describes some examples of the influence of Israeli identity on participants' and group therapists' behavior, and on current training programs.     

Suicide in Group Therapy: Trauma and Possibility

Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts the experiences of two different long term psychodynamic psychotherapy groups in which a patient suicided. The acute reactions and longer term process of each group is described in detail and discussed. The reactions of the two leaders, married to each other and in a shared supervisory group with the late Anne Alonso, and their own working through of the traumatic losses are explored. Their experiences highlight the importance of open discussion of the suicides in the groups, consultation with senior colleagues, and continual processing of their own reactions as a means of fostering posttraumatic growth. The authors discuss their experience in light of the literature on trauma in groups and the emerging literature on posttraumatic growth and they reflect on implications for the community of group therapists.     

Hatred in Group Therapy: A Rewarding Challenge

Hatred is a powerful affective experience that can be disruptive to the work of a therapy group, yet it may also enhance a member's capacity to deal with strong affects. This paper explores a particular aspect of hatred, the hate directed at one member of a cotherapy team. An effort is made to explore the experience from an intersubjective and motivational systems perspective, focusing primarily on the therapist and one patient. The impact of the cotherapy relationship is also considered, as well as the whole group's capacity to contain and work with this powerful affective response. The way that the group managed this explosive situation speaks to the power of group therapy in healing and transforming its members.