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Something about transference changes in group psychotherapy, or so many wkriters have it. If this is true, the question is what changes and how. This paper considers this question with particular reference to one reported change—dilution. It examines the thinking of key writers on transference since Freud, the meaning of dilution, and some important theories and suggestions about the nature of transference in group psychotherapy. After this review, it ventures some judgments on whether transference in group therapy can truly be held to be different, particularly whether it is “diluted.”
In a survey of the literature C. Beukenkamp2 reports that S. R. Slavson, W. R. Bion, N. W. Ackerman, M. Grotjahn, and others all state that there is a modification or dilution of the transference in analytically conducted groups. In addition, A. Stein16 reports that L. Wender, P. Schilder, S. H. Foulkes and E. J. Anthony, J. Spanjaard, and A. Wolf and E. K. Schwartz find that the intensity of feeling directed toward the therapist is lessened. Slavson15 ascribes the dilution to “target multiplicity” in groups: “The multiple targets … in the person of fellow patients diminishes the intensity … on any one.”
Explicitly or otherwise, these comments compare transference in therapy groups to transference as it is experienced in individual therapy. Certainly there is a difference in the therapist-patient relationship. It can be experienced vividly by any therapist who for the first time sees in a group patients he has until then treated individually, especially if he tries to observe the frequent injunction of group-therapy trainers to remain as far as possible in the background and