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Group Therapy

Group therapy, a term attributed to the late Dr. J. L. Moreno (creator of psychodrama and a contemporary of Sigmund Freud), began as a form of psychotherapy that departed from the conventional one-on-one doctor-patient relationship by allowing multiple persons to receive simultaneous care. In its most basic meaning, group therapy is a therapist facilitating a group of three or more persons who mutually benefit psychologically from interaction among themselves and the therapist.

In its inception, group therapy was a purely therapeutic modality. However, in the last 40 years, group therapy has evolved to include other facilitator–multiple-person groups for such varied purposes as providing inspirational and reeducative opportunities. In such a group, problem solving, motivation, education, sensitivity awareness, and specific training are but a few of the objectives that may be pursued by people mutually gathered for a common purpose under the leadership of a facilitator. An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting or a group of employees interacting to gain sensitivity regarding sexual harassment are examples in the evolution of the concept of group. However, regardless of the purpose of the group, dynamic interaction remains the essence of all group activity.

Application to Juveniles

Group therapy for juveniles is a natural extension of the goals and aims for which the juvenile court was created in 1899—namely, to foster care for juveniles. The concepts of treatment and rehabilitation have, over time, included the subconcepts of counseling and therapy. Line staff in juvenile facilities are often officially termed counselors, indicative of the goal of making the living environment a therapeutic milieu for positive change. Inclusive in this counseling treatment modality is the use of groups for varied purposes, a practice that became common during the 1960s.

Two different delinquency projects pioneered group therapy. The Provo Experiment (1959 to 1965) used the concept of allowing peer groups to solve problems under the structure of “guided group interaction.” In the Silverlake Experiment (1964 to 1968), youths used daily group meetings to solve problems with an adult serving as a facilitator and not an authority figure. Because of these projects, most probation departments began designing treatment approaches that depended heavily on group interaction as the focus of behavioral change.

The use of groups failed to achieve the lofty ultimate goal of reducing recidivism for the same reason many criminal justice programs fail—namely, programmatic overexpectation. Groups alone cannot accomplish short-term behavioral change and have been increasingly replaced by more confrontive methods found in boot camps, wilderness or challenge programs (such as VisionQuest), and radical behavior modification programs. However, the reduced dependence on group therapy has been premature, for research has shown that juveniles who are young, anxious, verbal, intelligent, and neurotic can benefit from group interaction.

Advantages of Group Therapy

Group therapy has three distinct advantages for juveniles: (1) enhancing basic socialization, (2) facilitating mental health, and (3) fostering training and reeducation. The following paragraphs describe these advantages in more detail.

Socialization

The adage that you cannot resocialize someone who has not been socialized is true, and groups can serve to provide remedial socialization. Groups create one more additional opportunity to learn how to behave properly. The group process intrinsically provides some form of structure in which members assume or are assigned special roles. Inherent to the group construct is the process of goals being implicitly accepted or explicitly defined. The juvenile enhances socialization as he or she learns to stay in a role, participates as a team player, and helps the group realize a common goal. The necessary external, social control results from group norms being applied with varying pressure to each group member as part of an ongoing group structure. Juveniles benefit from the social contacts made in a group setting through shared experiences that ease social tension and promote self-confidence. As group members learn to relate to each other more freely, they learn to compromise as well as give and receive.

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