Prologue

The Past 15 Years Have Been Interesting for Psychoanalytic group psychotherapy. Not only was there a paradigm shift, as seen in the work of Kohut (1984), Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage (1992, 2002), Stolorow and Atwood (1992), Mitchell and Aron (1999), and others who provided individual therapy, but there also was a significant influence on group therapists who quickly saw and adapted these theoretical and clinical shifts to their group psychotherapy practices. These moderns and postmoderns enriched dyadic treatment and freed analysts and therapists from the strictures of classical theory and practice. The emergence of creative dynamic work, particularly useful in group therapy, gave the therapist both theoretical explanations and clinical recommendations. Although group therapy has produced a large body of its own work in theory and practice, the crossover from dyadic theory provided new dimensions for group therapists to explore and adapt.

The papers in this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry represent a wonderful cross-section of the creative ways in which group therapists have used these advances.

Martin Livingston describes the importance of a clinical focus on affect and narcissistic vulnerability on the deepening of group process. He advances the idea that the analyst's emotional availability and understanding are necessary for mutative change. Livingston plumbs the importance of this personal responsiveness and provides his group members with the opportunity to work at affectively rich levels with one another and with him.

Walter Stone, treating chronic mentally ill patients, offers a hopeful perspective to those who work with this population. His intersubjective perspective, in which he examines his own experience as part of the process, provides us with the kind of inner searching now so characteristic of clinical theory but not often so clearly demonstrated.