Bringing life into the group experience: The power of immediacy

One of the great advantages of group treatment is the potential for immediacy. It is possible to charge interpersonal exchanges with a therapeutic power rarely achieved in other modalities. Members responses to one another occur in front of the group as a whole, which makes the dynamics more available and comprehensive than if such interchanges were merely reported. The art of group treatment may be said to consist of fostering this immediacy. It calls for systematically removing blocks to the living moment. This paper presents four techniques for resolving impediments to immediacy: 1. Translating the remote past into the living present; 2. Resolving tendencies of members to fixate rather than to engage in progressive interchanges; 3. Converting oblique communications into their true interpersonal messages; 4. Resolving any tendency to construe oneself as a victim, in order to ward off meaningful and immediate give- and-take.