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Many readers of this Journal who are solely engaged in individual therapy will feel in sympathy with Strobel's reflections on group therapies. The author does not wish to take issue with any methods or schools of treatment and quotes Jung, who stated in a letter (), that he who battles with the inner world has neither time nor inclination to fight other people.
Strobel points to the danger of collective consciousness for the individual who might, in his longing for containing and being contained, identify with the collective consciousness of the group. One-sided rational collective values activate the dark side of the irrational unconscious that finds its extreme expression in terrorism. Strobel warns us of the present-day ‘fashion’ of group therapy. He holds the view that therapeutic groups often have a self-alienating effect on their participants and may block developing processes, but thinks that patients in analytic training can learn from group experience as long as they subsequently discuss it in their personal analysis. He attaches considerable importance to dreams that indicate that all is not well in a group. From a dream made available to the author, Strobel deduced that leaders who are inflated and identified with the archetype of the saviour/healer can have a fascinating and dangerous levelling-down effect on the members of their group. The author stresses the importance of analysis for group leaders. He refutes the idea often put forward that therapists who treat patients individually neglect the elementary need for communication in present-day man. On the contrary, Strobel holds with Jung that relating to the self which takes place in individual analysis, leads automatically to relating to other people.
Readers belonging to the London group of Jungians will feel somewhat puzzled by Strobel's statement that a two-person relationship takes place on ‘64 different levels of functioning’. However, even without the notion of such a multiplicity of levels, one