[The interactional principle in individual and group psychotherapy]

We have shown that while on the one hand interactional psychotherapy is based on the nosology of psychoanalysis, in the realization of its methods and techniques it is nevertheless clearly distinguished from the standard approach of psychoanalysis. We developed this specific therapeutic procedure to meet the needs of patients with ego-pathological phenomena, more and more of whom are now turning to the analytic psychotherapist and in whom psychoanalysts are also showing a more and more intensive interest. This is demonstrated by the work of Kernberg (1978), Kohut (1971) and Blanck and Blanck (1978), as well as that of Fürstenau (1977) and König (1975) in the German-speaking world. We perceive the interactional psychotherapy that we have proposed (Heigl-Evers and Heigl, 1973 and 1979) as a therapy for ego-pathogenic phenomena. It is indicated in the case of patients with this type of disorder in a certain phase, usually the initial one. If a patient succeeds, with the help of this treatment, in developing an ego state roughly equivalent to what Freud referred in 1937 as the normal ego and which he considered to be a prerequisite for psychoanalytic therapy, then it should be possible to treat the conflict pathology which is also usually present in such patients, using the classical repertoire of psychoanalysis according to the principle of interpretation.