A Kleinian approach to group psychotherapy

This article presents clinical material from a group that is now in its seventh year. The clinical material illustrates an aspect of the working through of depressive anxieties. The theoretical framework for understanding the material and my interventions is Bion's application of Klein's ideas. The clinical vignettes show how a group struggles with the split between good and bad characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position (Ps) and the more integrated view of objects as both good and bad, characteristic of the depressive position (D). This more integrated view carries with it the capacity for both love and hate. One member's early memory of cruelty mobilizes other members' guilt toward their objects as well as their reparative wishes.