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Group psychotherapy helps to lessen the sense of uniqueness found in many phobics and to counteract the dependency in individual therapy that is directed toward the therapist. Six phobic housewives met one hour a week for nine months. For the first five months individual psychotherapy was also given. At the beginning, the members exaggerated their symptoms and showed increasing dependency on the leader whose role was passive. Disorganization and regression appeared. At the sixth session, when the therapist became more active, the members drew closer to each other and very intimate sexual and aggressive fantasies were ventilated. Competition to win the leader's approval began and led to relinquishing of phobias. Following this, the members became less cohesive, renewing old friendships outside the group which their phobias had caused them to give up.
Group therapy was preceded by about three months of individual treatment to build a strong rapport with the leader. The effective factors in this experience were: 1, sibling rivalry; 2, the clearcut nature of the target against which group pressure was directed; and 3, the group serving as a defense against depression and a school for behavioral patterning that offered a sense of identity and rewarded behavioral improvement.