Management of intense countertransference in group psychotherapy conducted in situations of civic conflict

Conducting group psychotherapy in a situation of intractable conflict such as Northern Ireland activates turbulent emotional dilemmas within psychotherapists and group members alike. Professional practice and therapeutic zeal must struggle daily to survive the stark encounter with the reality of a regressive and primitive psychology and on occasion may succumb to atavistic tendencies, dragging relationships down to primitive levels and leaving connections broken. In this article, three group therapists describe their countertransference struggles when leading such groups. They meet in a psychosocial setting in which the risk to one's psyche parallels the risk to one's life and limb. The countertransference experienced here is dark, indeed identified by one author as not unlike Dante's Inferno. They describe how understanding their personal countertransference enables them to survive emotionally even though it may not always lead to the survival of their groups. The effect of those struggles also troubled the act of writing itself making cooperation difficult on occasion, a mirror of the external social matrix.