The Effects of the Balint Group on its Members and Leader

Abstract

Balint's work promotes better psychological and medical treatment of many so-called “problem patients.” With understanding, these patients often lose the characteristic of being a heavy burden and even become interesting and gratifying. Time invested at the beginning phase of treatment often brings considerable saving of time over extended periods. The doctor's need for intensive involvement diminishes and psychological emergencies become less frequent.

Balint helped to make these goals possible by teaching psychoanalytic principles in a simple way, talking in clear, comprehensible language and creating for physicians the possibility for emotional experience and growth through group work. Such experience is indispensable for the training of the family doctor.

This paper summarizes essential elements of the group work, in which the leader profits as well as the family doctor. The leader has to learn to formulate clinical experience in clear, non-technical language which describes how patients are treated in the practice of hospital and office medicine. The group experience, furthermore, helps the physician to develop his capacity for empathy by better understanding himself.