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Loeser and Bry are interested in the total impact of the therapist on the group. Since all members react individually to his personal characteristics, these become especially influential. Defects in technique are often expressions of the therapist's personality, and failures in treatment correspond to unanalyzed areas in the therapist. Identification with patients, provided there is no unconscious conflict, leads the therapist to the awareness necessary for timely and true interpretation, and permits vicarious gratification of the therapist's own needs. He may use passivity and permissiveness as a cloak for unconscious hostility. Reich describes several attitudes of the therapist. He may feel omnipotent, possessing the healing touch; he may be a pedagogue, believing that to teach is to heal; he may feel sexual and libidinous interest in the patient; or he may use power to gratify his narcissism. Fatigue, much greater after working with groups than with individuals, decreases the therapist's defenses and emotional control. This is important, for group therapy demands greater activity than does individual therapy.
Treatment is less deep with homogeneous than with heterogeneous groups and should be accommodated to the personality of the therapist. One who is himself repressed should avoid a deep analytic approach, and one fearful of hostility should avoid the expression of such feelings without offering opportunity to the group to work them through. A parental attitude by the therapist is necessary for cohesion of the group, but is dangerous if it leads to over-dependence and to repression of transference feelings, especially negative feelings. Permissiveness helps the expression of therapeutically relevant material but some degree of direction, restraint, and support of the superego is necessary lest the group disintegrate because of the freedom of the members' expressions of feeling. Countertransference may be studied and interpreted by trained nonparticip