title: Individual and group therapies as constructive continuous experiences.
abstract: We began this paper with the conceptualization that individual and group psychotherapies were potentially continuous just as internal and external experiences are co-extensive. We recognized Winnicott's "holding," "regression to dependence," and "The primary maternal preoccupation." In our specific context of individual and group therapies, a state of being, a new construct of one's self can be invented in ways that can overturn the received. Clinician and patient can invent a new state of being and new meaning. For our patient, individual therapy was experienced as impacted space where she could neither be nor invent new meaning with another. "Intimacy" as a problem could not be dealt with in individual work without the risk of decompensation. In group psychotherapy she found no such risks or congestion. Rather, she found space. She was dislodged and group psychotherapy received her by giving her an opportunity to renegotiate who hosts whom. She recognized that group was in the service of the human being and was able to absorb her intolerable conflicts and transfer them without danger to anyone. It was a trusting attitude to the surrounding and was motivated by connectedness toward others. As a result there can be a state of being and the real possibility of thinking as one's own self and for one's self in the midst of others without losing one's newly established self. In a word she could become. Accordingly, our patient was able to work towards amelioration of psychopathological formations and was ready to make appropriate selection for the necessary therapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatric Medicine, Blue Ridge Hospital Division, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville 22908.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Elbirlik
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Apprey
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Moles
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D003379:Countertransference; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D011615:Psychotherapy, Group / Q000379:methods*; D012043:Regression, Psychology; D014167:Transference, Psychology