THE FUNCTION OF THE "ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP" IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL GROUP THERAPY PROGRAM

When a group therapy program is instituted on a psychiatric service with patients who have in the past predominantly translated their emotional conflicts into antisocial behavior, the occasions may become "gripe" meetings rather than "group" meetings. This is particularly true when the administrative physician serves as the group therapist. Institution of administrative group meetings, led by the physician-in-charge, serves several purposes.

1. It exposes as diversionary maneuvers by various group members irrational distortions of the administrative physician as a surrogate authority.

2. The sessions uncover transference and resistance phenomena previously cloaked as reasonable "gripes," thus preventing stasis of therapeutic progress.

3. Jockeying for status with the group leader as an antithetical factor in the therapeutic group sessions is reduced.

4. Reality-determined conscious reluctance about revealing emotion-charged material for fear of provoking a restrictive reaction if the group therapist is also the administrator is attenuated.

5. The meetings furnish the administrator with valid information about what is really wrong with the conditions under which his patients are living and this enables him to correct many untoward environmental influences immediately, to plan for long-term correction of others, and to interpret to the group administrative difficulties and limitations. As often as necessary I take a copy of the hospital budget to the administrative meeting to explain exactly how the annual appropriation is spent in each category.

6. The administrative group experience can promote professional growth (and may also provoke acute anxiety) in the administrative psychiatrist.

7. The administrative group serves a valuable function in therapy by providing a contribution to increasing individual ego strength in the patients participating.