The authors assert that one may view intractable political violence as a genre of ‘emplotted’ action in which society enacts, writes and organizes its narratives into a symbolic system and a mode of historical explanation and a configuration of group relations, which have a storytelling capacity of their own. We demonstrate that in Northern Ireland there is a constant making and narrating of history and that this repetitive and reciprocal ritual of reliving history is a means of managing a profound psychic trauma and displacement which engenders and entrenches political violence, that profoundly affects therapists and their group members.

In this paper, the author draws on his experience as a group therapist, noting parallels between the often intense but well contained dynamics of therapy groups and what they can tell us about violence in America. He examines the tension between bearing and understanding feelings and the desire to act on them, sometimes destructively in therapy groups and in society. He notes the omnipresent desire to find scapegoats rather than bear our own discomforts and notes the same in the abuse through which those in power scapegoat those under their control. Using the ideas of Roche, Volkan, and others, he also notes that current violence emerges from threats to individual or group identities often embedded in unfinished crises in the past, whether in a therapy group or in American society. Unresolved racial tensions reaching into the past is one outstanding example. He concludes noting the important role of reparation and forgiveness in therapy groups and society to slow the forward movement of violence.

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It is generally accepted that a 7-10 member therapy group is the ideal size. The realities of outpatient group psychotherapy, however, are that groups are often considerably smaller than that. Yet, despite these realities, little attention has been paid to how small groups may be effectively led. This paper will examine the dynamics of less-than-ideal-sized groups and suggest how their effectiveness may be maximized. LITERATURE REVIEWMajor literature reviews, such as those by Yalom (1975} andFulkerson, Hawkins andAlden (1981}, emphasize the value of therapy groups with five members or more in contrast to those with fewer than five members. Yalom (1975) writes:My own experience and a consensus of the clinical literature suggests that the ideal size of an interactional group is approximately 7, with an acceptable range of 5 to 10 members. By contrast he adds:When a group is reduced to the size of 4 or 3, it often ceases to operate as a group; member interaction diminishes, and therapists often find themDr.