The author reports a seven-year experience of teaching group therapy. A crucial factor is the reversal of the balance of power between the therapist and patient. In the beginning the therapist's struggle to establish his identity as a healer involves him in these crises: 1, intolerance of discomfort in the patient and direct attack on symptomatic behavior; 2, warding off of impulsive and regressive behavior by identification with the laws and accepted mores of society; 3, fears of loss of status and of being shamed, and devices to control the patients; 4, the problem of relating in public and reduced capacity for warmth and spontaneity; 5, the need for manifest positive feeling in group psychotherapy and attempts at fostering it; 6, problems in the acceptance and therapeutic use of ambivalent and hostile feelings toward the therapist. These crises center about the therapist's need to validate his professional image and difficulties in learning the recognition and use of positive and negative feelings. The instructor's stress on the universality of such problems is helpful.