Am J Psychiatry 1975; 132:1164-1167
Copyright © 1975 by American Psychiatric Association
History and analysis of a leaderless group of professional therapists
W Hunt and A Issacharoff
The authors describe the experiences of a group of 11 psychiatrists and
psychologists who met for 3 years with the initial purpose of providing
peer supervision in group therapy. The group became a basic assumption
dependency group in which all members had both realistic and magical
expectations for help with their personal lives, and a resulting attempted
transformation into a leaderless therapy group was a failure. The authors
indicate that the experiences of this group illustrate some of the
functions of group-leader interaction in allowing group and individual
growth.
