The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom, Molyn Leszcz Read Free Book Online

fashionable but flashy garb, she would sweep in, sometimes throwing kisses, and immediately begin talking, oblivious to whether another member was in the middle of a sentence. Here was narcissism in the raw! Her worldview was so solipsistic that it did not take in the possibility that life could have been going on in the group before her arrival.
    After very few meetings, Valerie began to give gifts: to an obese female member, a copy of a new diet book; to a woman with strabismus, the name of a good ophthalmologist; to an effeminate gay client, a subscription to Field and Stream magazine (intended, no doubt, to masculinize him); to a twenty-four-year-old virginal male, an introduction to a promiscuous divorced friend of hers. Gradually it became apparent that the gifts were not duty-free. For example, she pried into the relationship that developed between the young man and her divorced friend and insisted on serving as confidante and go-between, thus exerting considerable control over both individuals.
    Her efforts to dominate soon colored all of her interactions in the group. I became a challenge to her, and she made various efforts to control me. By sheer chance, a few months previously I had seen her sister in consultation and referred her to a competent therapist, a clinical psychologist. In the group Valerie congratulated me for the brilliant tactic of sending her sister to a psychologist; I must have divined her deep-seated aversion to psychiatrists. Similarly, on another occasion, she responded to a comment from me, “How perceptive you were to have noticed my hands trembling.”
    The trap was set! In fact, I had neither “divined” her sister’s alleged aversion to psychiatrists (I had simply referred her to the best therapist I knew) nor noted Valerie’s trembling hands. If I silently accepted her undeserved tribute, then I would enter into a dishonest collusion with Valerie; if, on the other hand, I admitted my insensitivity either to the trembling of the hands or to the sister’s aversion, then, by acknowledging my lack of perceptivity, I would have also been bested. She would control me either way! In such situations, the therapist has only one real option: to change the frame and to comment on the process—the nature and the meaning of the entrapment. (I will have a great deal more to say about relevant therapist technique in chapter 6.)
    Valerie vied with me in many other ways. Intuitive and intellectually gifted, she became the group expert on dream and fantasy interpretation. On one occasion she saw me between group sessions to ask whether she could use my name to take a book out of the medical library. On one level the request was reasonable: the book (on music therapy) was related to her profession; furthermore, having no university affiliation, she was not permitted to use the library. However, in the context of the group process, the request was complex in that she was testing limits; granting her request would have signaled to the group that she had a special and unique relationship with me. I clarified these considerations to her and suggested further discussion in the next session. Following this perceived rebuttal, however, she called the three male members of the group at home and, after swearing them to secrecy, arranged to see them. She engaged in sexual relations with two; the third, a gay man, was not interested in her sexual advances but she launched a formidable seduction attempt nonetheless.
    The following group meeting was horrific. Extraordinarily tense and unproductive, it demonstrated the axiom (to be discussed later) that if something important in the group is being actively avoided, then nothing else of import gets talked about either. Two days later Valerie, overcome with anxiety and guilt, asked for an individual session with me and made a full confession. It was agreed that the whole matter should be discussed in the next group meeting.
    Valerie opened the next meeting with the