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

come to me for help. You come regularly, you never miss a meeting, you pay me for my services, yet you systematically prevent me from helping you. Either you so hide your pain that I find little to offer you, or when I do extend some help, you reject it in one fashion or another. Reason dictates that we should be allies. Shouldn’t we be working together to help you? Tell me, how does it come about that we are adversaries?”
    But even that failed to alter our relationship. Ron seemed bemused and skillfully and convincingly speculated that I might be identifying one of my problems rather than his. His relationship with the other group members was characterized by his insistence on seeing them outside the group. He systematically arranged for some extragroup activity with each of the members. He was a pilot and took some members flying, others sailing, others to lavish dinners; he gave legal advice to some and became romantically involved with one of the female members; and (the final straw) he invited my co-therapist, a female psychiatric resident, for a skiing weekend.
    Furthermore, he refused to examine his behavior or to discuss these extragroup meetings in the group, even though the pregroup preparation (see chapter 12) had emphasized to all the members that such unexamined, undiscussed extragroup meetings generally sabotage therapy.
    After one meeting when we pressured him unbearably to examine the meaning of the extragroup invitations, especially the skiing invitation to my co-therapist, he left the session confused and shaken. On his way home, Ron unaccountably began to think of Robin Hood, his favorite childhood story but something he had not thought about for decades.
    Following an impulse, he went directly to the children’s section of the nearest public library to sit in a small child’s chair and read the story one more time. In a flash, the meaning of his behavior was illuminated! Why had the Robin Hood legend always fascinated and delighted him? Because Robin Hood rescued people, especially women, from tyrants!
    That motif had played a powerful role in his interior life, beginning with the Oedipal struggles in his own family. Later, in early adulthood, he built up a successful law firm by first assisting in a partnership and then enticing his boss’s employees to work for him. He had often been most attracted to women who were attached to some powerful man. Even his motives for marrying were blurred: he could not distinguish between love for his wife and desire to rescue her from a tyrannical father.
    The first stage of interpersonal learning is pathology display. Ron’s characteristic modes of relating to both men and women unfolded vividly in the microcosm of the group. His major interpersonal motif was to struggle with and to vanquish other men. He competed openly and, because of his intelligence and his great verbal skills, soon procured the dominant role in the group. He then began to mobilize the other members in the final conspiracy: the unseating of the therapist. He formed close alliances through extragroup meetings and by placing other members in his debt by offering favors. Next he endeavored to capture “my women”—first the most attractive female member and then my co-therapist.
    Not only was Ron’s interpersonal pathology displayed in the group, but so were its adverse, self-defeating consequences. His struggles with men resulted in the undermining of the very reason he had come to therapy: to obtain help. In fact, the competitive struggle was so powerful that any help I extended him was experienced not as help but as defeat, a sign of weakness.
    Furthermore, the microcosm of the group revealed the consequences of his actions on the texture of his relationships with his peers. In time the other members became aware that Ron did not really relate to them. He only appeared to relate but, in actuality, was using them as a way of relating to me, the powerful and feared male in the group. The