Common Forms of Resistance in Group Psychotherapy

Analytically oriented group psychotherapy should centralize its efforts on resistances rather than to place pressure on the recollection of experiences which are associated with strong and painful emotions. The term resistance is used here to indicate the force that prevents the freeing of unconscious material (1). Resistances of the individual become mobilized as resistances of the group (2). The clearance of resistance promotes the birth of insight. Insight is the reinstatement into awareness, context that was once conscious but subsequently became repressed. Insight is improved reality testing, following a timely meshing of gears between the past and present in relation to specific occasions of thought and behavior, emotion and intelligence, terror and object cathexis, hate and love, self-deceit and truth.

Common forms of resistance in group psychotherapy are unfolded in the broad categories of control and avoidance of feelings and the denial of emotions and anxiety, in phobias and belligerences. These diadic reactions permeate resistances and are manifested in the following ways: 1) difficulties in speaking, 2) antagonistic reactions, 3) mobilization of symptoms, and 4) queries about the efficacy of treatment.

A. Silence as a protection against the discovery of weakness. A brief review of early sessions in group psychotherapy discloses that patients use numerous maneuvers to keep the psychotherapist talking and themselves silent. They may sit quietly waiting for the group psychotherapist to open the discussion. Resistance may be manifested in prolonged periods of silence, in the lack of spontaneity of speech. There may be an attempt to entice the group psychotherapist into a debate concerning the efficacy of treatment. There may be an attempt to convert group psychotherapy into a classroom on a question and answer basis, thus forcing the group psychotherapist to do most of the talking. They may feel they need to be asked questions, so th