Appendix B: Training in Modern Group Analysis

In 1986, the Center added a separate program in group analysis, removing group training to this later phase. However, the history of the development of group analysis is included in the regular program. The training program in group analysis includes courses in the theory, practice, and technique of modern group analysis; the management of group-destructive resistances; the manifestations of the major psychoanalytic concepts as they operate in and are modified by the group setting; the identification and resolution of individual, subgroup, and group resistances; continuous group case seminars; and group supervision.

Since there is no time limit for completion of courses, candidates proceed at their own pace. Each semester, group supervision of private therapy groups is available. Candidates should have had, or be currently involved in, an approved psychoanalytic therapy group for at least 120 hours.

Modern analytic group psychotherpay aims at eliciting and resolving the resistances of individual members, subgroups, and finally, of the group as a whole. Resistances are viewed as an expression of the individual's characteristic modes of functioning which emerged in the adaptation to the pressures and stresses of his or her very first group—the family. Resistance is thus identified with survival. A second function associated with resistance is that of providing significant information about the patient's life history: the role the patient adopts in the group reflects the behavioral patterns developed in the face of psychological exigencies in the family. Given this understanding of resistance as essential, albeit immature, methods of maintaining psychic equilibrium and