Empathy in the Group Therapy of Alcoholics

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Deliberate identification with others and simultaneous increasing insight into oneself are thought to be the two important phases of the empathic process in the group therapy of alcoholics. No external discipline was imposed upon the 23 patients in whom the process of empathy was tested, since a main postulate underlying treatment was that they should seek to test recovery in situations beyond the therapist''s control. The expt. took place in the Hospice of the Crichton Royal Mental Hospital, Dumfries, Scotland during the winter of 1952. Certain portions of the group therapy sessions are reported, selected for their relevance to the empathic process as workably described, under these headings Drinking tendencies and will-power; the childish tendency; the sensitive tendency; the desire for sobriety; problem drinking, an obsession; the personal nature of the problem; why do people drink; why be sober; maintaining sobriety; the goal beyond sobriety. Discussions were non-technical, in keeping with the interpersonal nature of the empathic process, and stressed psychological factors which precipitated a clear ethical component in the dynamics of empathy. While the alcoholic''s physiological sensitivity was not neglected, but reiterated from time to time, discussion highlighted the behavioral aspects of sensitivity in childishness, grandiosity, impulsiveness, intolerance and rationalizations. The give and take of the discussions appeared well to illustrate the empathic process. One third of the group is still abstinent (report received in Dec. 1953) one 3d improved, others unimproved or unheard from. Where recovery is threatened, or relapses occur, there seems to be a neglect of the empathic process. Both during the therapy and in the reports on patients since received, resistance to recovery and relapses suggest that the patient has failed to communicate with fellow alcoholics or with others in trouble, and has either decided that his recovery is certain without further help or lost his faith in the power to think or feel as others do.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: