The Learning Group

The authors describe a group approach to training first-year residents in which direct observation of patient-therapist interaction, seminars with guest experts, and preceptorship methods are combined. In these groups of six to eight residents, meeting with a tutor for 225 hours a year, anxiety is mobilized and different constellations of group dynamics develop. First-year residents need to develop therapeutic ego functions. Thus an analogy is made between psychoanalytic therapy aimed at ego-building and the learning group aimed at developing the residents' therapeutic tools on both the emotional and intellectual levels.