Inpatient Psychotherapy—Integrative or Integrating? Corrections and Position.: Helmut Enke. Pp. 346-351.

In recent observations and publications on psychoanalytically slanted inpatient psychotherapy, the concept of bipolar clinical group psychotherapy presented in 1964 by the author and associates is occasionally mentioned and

contrasted with so-called integrative therapy. A fundamental error of comprehension underlies this thinking it is true that bipolar group psychotherapy was developed within particular boundary conditions; it was not, however, meant primarily as an organizational model, but rather as a dialectic-dynamic integrational concept. Misconceptions and completely wrong assignments of the opposite meaning that have crept into the literature over the course of time should be corrected: for example, the relation to the therapeutic community, and function and structure of the therapy team. The idea of a primary integrivity is not very realistic unless the different intentions and processes are leveled off. The intentions and processes have their own origins and develop their individual effectiveness within the overall “multipolar” field of forces of the therapeutic (closed-loop) system. The constant task of integration consists of promoting cohesive vectors while recognizing and coping with interference fields tending naturally against integration.