Group Therapy: Basic Concepts and Skills

Group therapy has a longstanding history of being an efficient modality of psychotherapy. In general, individual and group therapies are considered equally efficacious and often regarded as effective concomitant treatment modalities. Differing mainly in therapists’ intent, processes, structure, and composition to meet client needs, group therapy broadly promotes preventive, remedial, educational, and skill acquisition functions through the lens of the interpersonal and interactional framework. Given the allowance of limiting the crucial aspects of group therapy to a chapter, the focus is on bringing together key ideas in group therapy. Learning group dynamics and the effect of influencing variables on the development and productivity of the group makes the foundational requisite for group therapy practitioners. This chapter highlights these select aspects from the vast and complex body of knowledge about group dynamics that have a significant impact on group therapy. Another closely related aspect central to group work is acquiring leadership skills. The style and skills a group leader displays have a direct impact on the behaviours of group members and the progress of a group. This chapter additionally focuses on effective leadership aspects, core and specific group skills, and strategies to navigate through certain challenging issues throughout group development. Core group skills as such are fundamentally group facilitation skills applicable to various group work settings—task, psychoeducational, crisis-intervention, therapy groups, and so on. Furthermore, practitioners will gain a brief understanding of ethical and professional issues of group practice, and the stages of group development (formation, initial, working, final, follow-up and evaluation). The main goal of the chapter is to introduce with conciseness a comprehensive body of text emphasizing the interpersonal and interactional underpinnings of group therapy. The chapter strives to achieve such a feat at different points through tangible and practical illustrations and case examples.