Observations on Emotional Currents in Interview Group Therapy with Adolescent Girls: Hyman Spotnitz. J. Nerv. and Ment. Disease, CVI, 1947, pp. 565–582.

For two years a group of ten adolescent girls met for discussions in the presence of a social worker who was also treating them individually. Two types of emotional forces at work in the group impressed the author: 1, the drives to have sexual pleasure, to marry, to reproduce and to raise children, which he calls the 'reproductive constellation or id feelings'; 2, the girls' physical, emotional and integration inadequacies, which he calls the 'inadequacy constellation or ego feelings'. When the reproductive constellation was stimulated and the inadequacy constellation diminished, the group held together. When the opposite occurred, the group tended to break up. Society should provide a governing agency to stimulate the reproductive constellation of emotions and dispel the inadequacy constellation.

Noteworthy is the observation that adolescent girls found it possible to discuss incest wishes and related problems in a group. The all-important significance of the group leader as a cohesive force and the girls' rivalry for her favor are factors which are not given sufficient emphasis.