Group Psychotherapy and Disorders of the Self

Abstract

In working from the perspective of the psychology of the self, the focus is to understand the uniqueness and subjective experience of each individual self A fixated or regressed self, regardless through which diagnostic label it speaks or through which tongue it rages, can only get back on the road of psychological development if the cause of its disintegration is understood from its own subjective experience (Atwood and Stolorow, 1984; Stolorow, 1987). Group psychotherapy allows the individual self an opportunity to resume its developmental journey. Such evolution is possible when each diagnostic flavour is allowed to emerge, is respected and understood for how it arrived at its destination, while helped to discover in which direction it chooses to grow.

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