Concentric Group Therapy for Aggression: A Historical Perspective

The purpose of this study is to present themes from a novel group therapy intervention for veterans with aggression. The groups were designed based on a psychodynamic rather than cognitive?behavioral theoretical framework, in which there are two overlapping short and long-term groups. Content analysis revealed six themes including, control your anger, helplessness, improvement, disagreements, where are the boundaries, and co-leadership, parallel process. This unique and innovative approach for the treatment of veterans with a history of aggressive behavior helped improved their understanding of aggression and decreased these behaviors. This group model may also have potential to be expanded to other patient populations with similar behaviors.