A group therapist's (analyst's) lament.

Abstract

The author critically responds to an earlier article by David Daskovsky (1998) regarding analytic group psychotherapy.The recent article by David Daskovsky, "The Abuser and the Abused" (Daskovsky, 1998), left me in great dismay and confusion. This article adds weight to the perception among uninformed psychologists and psychoanalysts that analytic group psychotherapy (analytically informed) is the unrecognized offspring of psychoanalysis in the United States. It does so by directly ignoring group dynamic and group analytic literature and annotating its conceptualizations solely in the realm of dyadic therapy. Of the 10 references quoted by Daskovsky, none are of analytic group therapy, yet Masson and Fairbaim are references. There are no references to group treatment of incested patients although that particular area has been well covered by Ganzarain and Buchele (1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, among others. Absent as well is any formulation of the group treatment modalities commonly found in day hospitals, or inpatient settings, although that is the context in which the "therapeutic action" takes place. As well, there are no references to my own work on countertransference in analytic group therapy (Roth, 1980(Roth, , 1990, although the subtitle of the article addresses splits in countertransference. It is well accepted that countertransference phenomena in group therapy with difficult patients are far more complex