[Group cohesion and defensive behavior in the course of inpatient group therapies]

This paper examines the connection between the therapy success, group cohesion and defence-formation during an inpatient psychoanalytically oriented group-therapy treatment. Over a period of one year, the Stuttgarter Bogen was given every third week after each therapy group. At the beginning and at the end of the three-month treatment, the patients were examined with the defence-mechanism computer test (Abwehrmechanismus-Computer-Test, ACT) and SCL-90-R. In addition, the 48 patients were divided into a successful and unsuccessful group by means of the General-Symptom-Index (GSI) of the SCL-90-R. On the whole, the results stressed the importance of group cohesion as a factor with a major influence on therapeutic efficacy. In the defences, there is a dominance of projective and introjective mechanisms. In the group of successful patients, there was an increase in group cohesion as well as a change in individual defence-mechanisms over the course of treatment: Repression increased and identification with the aggressor decreased. In the case of the unsuccessful patients, on the other hand, there was increased regression in the defences over the course of treatment, and there was no change in group cohesion. Accordingly, the connections found between group cohesion and defencemechanisms can be regarded as an indication of internal stabilization in the successful patients, whereas the findings for the patients that did not improve represent a reaction to excessive strain.