Freud: Dictionary of Psychoanalysis Edited by N. Fodor and F. Gaynor

Acting out should be expected in the treatment of incest victims. These persons attempt to communicate through actions a plethora of confusing feelings resulting from the incest; such actions occur outside the therapy sessions and their meanings are out of the patient's awareness. Working through the underlying feelings is the necessary therapeutic task. It is unlikely that acting-out behavior will be completely eliminated, but the development of self-acceptance and a willingness to explore the meaning of the behaviors are reasonable and attainable therapeutic goals with the help of the other group members.

Three areas of acting out are elucidated: sex, power and sadism, and self-destructiveness. Clinical vignettes drawn from the authors' experience conducting group psychotherapy are used to illustrate both acting out and working through.     

Prelogical Experience by Edward S. Tauber and Maurice R. Green

Working as director of a group psychotherapy training program in a university medical center, the author has observed many groups in periods of decreased group stability. These situations tend to arise frequently in an academic setting where summer breaks and other school-related holidays may result in extended periods of irregular attendance. Such times appear to be quite stressful to group members and leaders and frequently result in a storm of transferential and/or countertransferential acting out. This may carry over into supervision sessions via the mechanism of the parallel process and these, too, may become stressful, unrewarding, and nonproductive. An attempt to understand such situations and to find better ways of helping trainees deal with them constructively has resulted in the following ideas about group instability. Although these times remain uncomfortable and stressful, they can be managed and used to generate valuable information for the participants that can further the therapeutic process.     

Psychoanalysis and Nature: Commentary on Papers by Bodnar and Santostefano

This is a response to papers by Sebastiano Santostefano and Susan Bodnar. The response argues that the psychoanalytic view of constitutive conflict makes any assimilation of analysis and ecology very problematic. Patients may benefit from being in pleasant surroundings outside urban areas, but this is not psychoanalytic work. Psychoanalysis would entail them coming to understand why they are fueled by desires they do not recognize as their own. It would entail them working through how these desires have come to belong to them. Calling these desires natural or unnatural is not helpful, and it may be pernicious.     

Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers by August Aichhorn Edited by Otto Fleischmann,Paul Kramer and Helen Ross

A year-long psychotherapy group consisting of two co-therapists and eight grandmothers who were parenting their daughters' children is presented. Three models that correspond to the co-therapists' psychoanalytic developmental orientation were used to describe the group phases of development. A number of themes that emerged at different points in the group's life are delineated. They include: authority, control, sibling rivalry, the generation gap, dealing with schools, illness and mortality, isolation, defensiveness, anger, fear of going crazy, guilt, shame, separation, and abandonment. Transference and countertransference issues are also discussed.     

An Application of Psychoanalysis to Education by Richard M. Jones

Abstract

This report describes a psychosocial therapy group for Parkinson’s patients, focusing on the therapeutic processes arising when group members and therapist share the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. The paper explores the question, “What is the therapeutic effect on the group when the therapist suffers and displays the same illness as members of the group” ? Countertransference issues are described.     

Psychoanalytic Education,Vol. V. Science and Psychoanalysis Edited by Jules H. Masserman

This article uses a psychoanalytic ego-psychological framework to examine the regression experienced by an individual group member and the defenses mobilized to counter it, focusing in particular on the defensive functions of constituting leadership somewhere in the group. The leader, regarded as an internal object in the member's object world, is hypothesized to be a combination of projected and personified part-objects and at the same time an integrating whole object. Various phenomena of group life are discussed from this viewpoint, notably the lability of the relationship with the leader, the externalization of various endopsychic regulations, and the conditions supporting the defensive utility of the leader for the group member. The foundation for the emergence of social roles and consensual perception of the group and its leadership becomes apparent. A strictly intrapsychic view is maintained throughout.     

La Psychanalyse D'Aujourd' hui (Psychoanalysis of Today), Vol. I Edited by S. Nacht

In-depth group interaction occurred and was utilized by the leader in crisis-waiting-list groups where there was (1) minimal preparation of members; (2) frequent turnover of membership; and (3) little attention given to composition. Patients responded to the interpretation of negative and positive transferences and the here and now approach. The author concludes that the benefits of a nondirective leadership approach with this kind of group is often underutilized.