Les R. Greene

Participants' Perceptions in Small and Large Group Contexts

This study was designed to examine aspects of projective processes in small and large group contexts. Subjects were members of a Group Relations Conference; quantitative data were collected on their perceptions of themselves, the group as a whole, and the group consultants, following their participation in relatively unstructured small and large self-study groups. The findings provided some empirical support for predictions of more powerful and self-impoverishing projections in the large groups.

The State of Group Psychotherapy Process Research

The guest reviewer this month is Les R. Greene, Ph.D. Dr. Greene is on the staff of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, where he supervises and teaches Yale University psychiatry residents and psychology interns in group therapy and also conducts research in group therapy and group dynamics. In addition, he is on the adjunct faculties at the University of Hartford and the University of New Haven. He has a private practice in psychotherapy and organizational consultation in New Haven. Dr. Greene is the new editor of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy and serves as an editorial consultant to several other related professional journals.

Psychological Differentiation and Social Structure

Summary From a sociopsychological theoretical perspective, the present study was designed to explore the interactive effects of personal and social boundaries on emotional reactions. Members of a group dynamics training conference (N = 41 men and women students) were assessed for level of psychological differentiation and then completed self-report questionnaires following participation in small and large self-study groups. Findings showed that the field dependent (i.e., relatively undifferentiated) members, compared to the field independent participants, reacted more adversely in the large and less structured group context and more positively in the small group setting.

Member Learning in Analytic Self-Study Groups

Summary Member learning in an analytically oriented self-study group conference based on the Tavistock model was studied by a six-week follow-up questionnaire. Conference members were 25 graduate students in clinical, counselling, and school psychology, social work, and psychiatry (10 men, 15 women; 22 white, three minority). Factor analysis of the questionnaire showed that members reported learning on three orthogonal factors: 1) general endorsement of the conference, 2) learning about personal relationships and small group behavior, and 3) learning about group dynamics and large group behavior. Content analysis of open-ended statements about member learning revealed approximately equal reports of learning about personal dynamics and group dynamics. Clinical psychologists reported more learning on factor 3 (p < .02), more group dynamics learning and less personal learning (x 2 = 9.00, p < .01) than school psychologists. It is concluded that the conference was a useful learning environment, and that membe...

Sex role-related countertransference revisited. A partial extension.

We attempted to extend two findings obtained at private university clinics to a heterogeneous community outpatient population: an under-representation of male patients in the case loads of beginning female therapists and longer treatment of female patients by beginning male therapists. Data from professional and preprofessional psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers partially replicated the first finding but not the second. The results thus leave open the question of subtle sex role-related countertransference in a large urban community mental health setting.

Psychological differentiation and clinical depression

Review of aspects of the theoretical formulations of Bibring, Beck, Seligman, and Blatt led to the suggestion that depression may be associated with a relatively global, undifferentiated cognitive style. The Embedded Figures Test was administered to 25 adult female depressed outpatients and 25 demographically comparable controls in order to test the hypothesis that depressed subjects would exhibit significantly greater field dependence, or less differentiation, than would nondepressed subjects. The results supported the present predictions. The findings are seen to be supportive of theoretical positions that have emphasized the presence of global response patterns and excessive reliance on external, contextual referents as cognitive correlates of depression.

PERSONAL BOUNDARY MANAGEMENT AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

In one of his last published works, the late A.K. Rice advanced two propositions regarding the nature of the individual’s dynamic relationship to a social collectivity (1969). One of these tenets held that group membership inherently involves the potentiation of primitive, latent anxieties around the preservation of ego identity, that is the sense of self as a familiar, integrated and demarcated entity. As a corollary, Rice posited that the capacity for joining in the rational, task-oriented activities of a group was directly limited by the extent to which the individual needed to defend against these archaic threats to the integrity of self boundaries. Rice’s insights into these group-induced processes of regression and primitivization which affect the participant’s self concept have served as an important aspect of the theoretical elucidation of the interface between the personality system and social system. The present paper, incorporating recent contributions from such diverse areas as developmental psychology and object relations theory, aims at expanding upon and further articulating the self boundary issues attending participation in group life.

Dissemination or dialogue

Comments on the article by B. E. Karlin and G. Cross (see record 2013-31043-001) on the national dissemination and implementation of evidence-based psychotherapies in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care system. Greene believes there are at least two related issues that the authors have yet to add to their list of lessons learned: (a) the considerable controversy about what constitutes evidence and the limitations and flaws of randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology in social science research, and (b) the idea that dialogue between therapist and researcher (Greene, 2012, 2014) rather than unidirectional, top-down dissemination (a word used no less than 80 times in their article) may be a more fruitful way of dealing with the resistances, reluctances, and refusals that clinicians often demonstrate regarding the implementation of laboratory-based treatments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Group Psychotherapy Research Studies That Therapists Might Actually Read: My Top 10 List

ABSTRACT Much like a bad marriage, the longstanding split between psychotherapy practitioner and researcher continues, each partner feeling unappreciated by and blaming of the other: Therapists are criticized for not reading research and, in turn, criticize researchers for their pursuit of studies that seem irrelevant to the clinical enterprise. In the present article, the author proposes that a shift in the design of psychotherapy research, away from pure outcome studies to models that focus on process, may serve to bridge the divide. Ten research designs exploring aspects of the process of group psychotherapy are illustrated from the recent literature, with the aim of furthering the dialogue between practitioner and researcher.

Processes and Outcomes in Prevention-Focused Time-Limited Groups for Girls

Abstract Processes and outcomes in 8-week prevention-focused, school-based groups for preadolescent girls were assessed in a naturalistic study. Specifically, whether such groups would facilitate their social-emotional development and whether affiliative processes in the groups were related to outcome were explored. In addition to expecting the groups to be effective, it was hypothesized that affiliative processes would be directly related to outcome and, more particularly, that increased positive affiliative feelings from the group toward the individual would be more predictive of positive treatment outcome than increased positive feelings from the individual toward the group. While findings did not support these hypotheses linking process to outcome, ancillary analyses revealed that different patterns of affiliation over time (i.e., U-shape pattern versus inverted U-shape pattern) distinguished the high- versus low-outcome participants, respectively.