Enhancing the Dyad II: The Transferential Benefits of Combining Group Therapy with Psychoanalytic Treatment

In his second paper on combined psychoanalysis and group therapy, the author explores the multiple transferences available for investigation. First, the author reviews the literature, demonstrating that the terrain of transferences explored within the dyadic setting has changed from Freud’s original concept of the transference neurosis to a wider definition. Then, the author presents an extended clinical vignette, illustrating the resolution of a sibling transference that had been entwined with the parental transferences until group therapy was added to the patient’s psychoanalytic treatment. The vignette underscores the importance of the to-and-fro between modalities during the working-through of the transferences that had been identified – but not sufficiently resolved – during the patients’ analysis. The author then explains how certain elements endemic to the group setting allow for working-through of these multiple transferences. Moreover, the author describes other benefits conferred by combined treatment, such as its providing therapist and patient a transitional experience of the outside world, and a post-termination experience with the analyst still present as group therapist. Subsequent discussion also addresses the challenges inherent in co-therapy leadership.