Yalom and group therapy Flashcards
Yalom’s 11 therapeutic factors in group therapy
Instillation of hope Universality Imparting information Altruism Corrective recapitulation of the family Development of socialization skills Imitative behavior Interpersonal learning Group cohesiveness Catharsis Existential factors
Instillation of hope
The therapist must “believe in themselves and in the efficacy of the group” and let this confidence show.
Universality
“Patients express great relief at discovering that they are not alone, that others share the same dilemmas and life experiences.”
Imparting information
didactic instruction (generally by the therapist) and advice (generally from the group members)
Altruism
Members gain through giving
The corrective recapitulation of the primary family group
Many clients come from a degree of dysfunction or dissatisfactory family experiences.
Familial conflicts may be relived but they must be relived “correctively.”
Development of socializing skills
“Social learning – the development of basic social skills – is a therapeutic factor that operates in all therapy groups, although the nature of the skills” varies, as does the process. May be implicit or explicit (for the very ill)
Imitative behavior
It is not uncommon for clients to “try on” bits and pieces of other people and then relinquish them as ill fitting.
Interpersonal learning, or the group as social microcosm
“For the longest time I believed the group was a natural place for unnatural experiences. It was only later that I realized the opposite – it is an unnatural place for natural experiences.”
Harry Stack Sullivan’s theory
Interpersonal theory
Parataxic distortion
Individuals’ proclivity to distort their perceptions of others. A parataxic distortion occurs in an interpersonal situation when one person relates to another not on the basis of the realistic attributes of the other but on the basis of a personification existing chiefly in the former’s own fantasy.
