Interpersonal Conflict Management in Group Psychotherapy: An Integrative Perspective

Abstract

The author presents an integrative approach to understanding and managing interpersonal conflicts that can be applied both to intragroup conflicts in psychotherapy groups and to the marital and organizational environment within either a psychoanalytical or an action-orientated framework. Four levels of intervention approaches are reviewed, including their underlying theoretical assumptions. At the first `emotional' level of conflict-management, group leaders focus on the expression of pent-up hostility. At the second `intrapsychic' level, they focus on the correction of perceptual distortions in one or both of the antagonists. At the third `interpersonal' level, leaders focus on disturbances of interaction and communication between two antagonists and at the fourth `group-as-a-whole' level, they focus on global group dynamic factors that seem to be influencing the conflict. Perspectives that focus solely on one level are seen as limited and incomplete.