Relational Group Psychotherapy: An Overview. Part III: Modes of Therapeutic Leadership

Abstract

The final article, of a three part series, concentrates on the therapist: how we might think about group and leadership, and what we might offer. What holds a group together is the therapist’s ever expanding understanding of the psychic realities (the ‘truths’) of the group and its members, including oneself, and our success in interesting others in reaching and deepening such understanding, at times painful and unwelcome. Leadership is a performance art, in which word cannot be easily separated from rhetorical deed, and these from presence. By our use of therapeutic oratory, we balance what we want to say with what others are ready to hear. We wear ‘two faces’, being both conservator and challenger of group process and culture. I identify four relational modes of speaking and listening that shape how we participate in reciprocal group exchanges: diplomacy, integrity, sincerity, and authenticity. These four inter-related modes are linked by communicative skills that we therapists strive to achieve in dealing with our group and each member and hope to model. They supply conceptual references for the therapeutic stance we have adopted, allowing us to be more aware of what we are doing, and why. Integrating some of the concepts presented in each article, I conclude with a description of my subjective experience as group leader, as I understand it.