The craft of bridging

The author offers the concept of bridging to integrate a variety of techniques used by group psychotherapists to strengthen the emotional bonds among group members. After documenting the need for therapeutic bridging, and highlighting its principal aims, the author illustrates a number of methods, including open-ended and direct questions, and invitations to group members to elicit more generalized interaction among group participants. In this way, the therapeutic potential of the group can be optimized.