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The co-editors of the journal's two special issues on "Violence in America" from group psychotherapy and mental health standpoints review the articles in Part I and introduce the articles in Part II. The latter includes articles on anger management in groups, group psychotherapy for domestic violence, domestic "homegrown" terrorism, and two general commentaries. The co-editors provide broad reference points for the focus on clinical concerns, levels of treatment, variations in types of perpetrators, screening for groups, and the group-as-a-whole, relational, and social contexts of violence. Whether in small therapy groups, social interventions, or society's management of violence, empathy, boundaries, holding, and containment must be provided in such a way that they prevent violent acts while healing the hurts and shame that underlie violence in all its forms. Therapists' familiarity with these issues in their work can contribute fruitfully to treatment efforts and addressing a pressing social problem.

The co-editors introduce a two-part Special Section of the Journal devoted to understanding and treating violence in America. They examine the relevance of clinical experience for contributions that can be made by group therapists and group dynamic thinkers to the growing national dialogue about this problem. The pervasive nature, causes, and different forms of violence in the United States are compared with those found in other countries. Underlying sociocultural values and myths, historical and current cultural contexts are considered breeding grounds for potential violence. How therapists can promote healthy change in their groups and in the broader society is explored. The articles contained in part one are reviewed against this backdrop.

Following an overview of psychoanalytic interpretation in theory, practice, and historical context, as well as the question of whether interpretations have scientific validity, the author holds that hermeneutics, the philosophical and psychological study of interpretation, provides a rich understanding of recent developments in self psychology, inter-subjective and relational perspectives, attachment theory, and psycho-spiritual views on psychoanalytic process. He then offers four distinct hermeneutical vantage points regarding interpretation in the psychoanalytic context, including (1) Freud's adaptation of the Aristotelian view of interpretation as the uncovering of a set of predetermined meanings and structures; (2) the phenomenological view of interpretation as the laying bare of "the things themselves," that is, removing the coverings of objectification and concretization imposed by social norms and the conscious ego; (3) the dialogical existential view of interpretation as an ongoing relational process; and (4) the transformational understanding in which interpretation evokes a "presence" that transforms both patient and analyst. He concludes by contending that these perspectives are not mutually exclusive ways of conducting an analysis, but rather that all occur within the analyst's suspended attention, the caregiving and holding essential to good therapeutic outcomes, and the mutuality of the psychoanalytic dialogue.

Recently discovered mirror neurons in the motor cortex of the brain register the actions and intentions of both the organism and others in the environment. As such, they may play a significant role in social behavior and groups. This paper considers the potential implications of mirror neurons and related neural networks for group therapists, proposing that mirror neurons and mirror systems provide "hard-wired" support for the group therapist's belief in the centrality of relationships in the treatment process and exploring their value in accounting for group-as-a-whole phenomena. Mirror neurons further confirm the holistic, social nature of perception, action, and intention as distinct from a stimulus-response behaviorism. The implications of mirror neurons and mirroring processes for the group therapist role, interventions, and training are also discussed.

Abstract Reviewing a series of articles in this special issue on combined treatment incorporating individual and group therapy, and in one instance couples therapy and a relationship group, the author provides a synoptic history of combined treatment, noting that the relational perspectives of psychoanalysis and systems theories of groups now provide conceptual frameworks for combined therapies. Taking up each article in turn, he considers that combined treatment poses particular problems while having certain advantages. He discusses the theoretical emphases and biases of each article, whether relational psychology, classical psychoanalysis, object relations theory, or self-psychology. He considers the roles of transference and countertransference, patient-therapist enactments, empathic attunement, "surrogate therapy" by the group members, and ethics in determining outcomes. In addition, the author notes how so-called difficult or regressed patients impact upon and are affected by the use of combined therapy modalities.

In this introduction to the special issue on "Group Therapist Countertransference to Trauma and Traumatogenic Situations," the author notes that for many therapists it is not only group member disclosures and re-enactments, but also the co-occurring, sociopolitical contexts in which they live that may involve traumatic challenges. He considers three historically evolving views of countertransference: (1) the "classical"position, (2) the "totalistic" view, and (3) the "intersubjective/relational" view. He views the therapist's intense emotionality (as opposed to clinical detachment) in response to trauma as inevitable, and considers the particular roles of "bystander," "perpetrator," and "victim" induced in the therapist by traumatic re-enactments in the group. He concludes with a synopsis of some of the key points made in each of the contributions to the special issue.

In this introduction to the special issue on "Group Therapist Countertransference to Trauma and Traumatogenic Situations," the author notes that for many therapists it is not only group member disclosures and re-enactments, but also the co-occurring, sociopolitical contexts in which they live that may involve traumatic challenges. He considers three historically evolving views of countertransference: (1) the "classical" position, (2) the "totalistic" view, and (3) the "intersubjective/relational" view. He views the therapist's intense emotionality (as opposed to clinical detachment) in response to trauma as inevitable, and considers the particular roles of "bystander," "perpetrator," and "victim" induced in the therapist by traumatic re-enactments in the group. He concludes with a synopsis of some of the key points made in each of the contributions to the special issue.

The social constructs of the group, the group self of an individual member, and the moral order of the group as a whole are described as basic, interrelated concepts essential to our understanding of scapegoating. Two patterns of scapegoating are then introduced: one concerns antagonistic, the other, agonistic relations of scapegoat to scapegoaters. A series of case examples are presented, one involves an advocacy group of socio-cultural "outsiders;" the other three pertain to scapegoating in therapy group settings. The case materials illustrate the meaning and usefulness of an intersubjective/social constructivist perspective on the problem of scapegoating.

Mysticism is a heightened awareness facilitating intuitive knowledge of group realities. In contrast to logical positivism, in which scientific knowledge consists of logic applied to a set of observations, the author holds that mystical awareness is pertinent to the conduct of therapy groups. The work of Bion, and also so-called "structuralist" theories, postulate pre-given templates that inform experience. The application of mystical thought to group consultation, leadership, and transformation of the self is discussed. The group context which allows for mystical experience is called the "sacred space." To emphasize the sacredness of the group, a kabbalist parallel to early development and projective identification is used to show how sacred metaphor and myth can enrich interpretation in groups.

Object relations theory and self psychology are psychoanalytic perspectives that are especially concerned with interpersonal relations and their mental representations. Object relations theory began as an intrapsychic "singleton" psychology with the work of Freud and Melanie Klein. It subsequently evolved into a multi-person psychology with the work of Bion on groups, as well as the clinical and theoretical contributions of Winnicott and Fairbairn. Kohutian self psychology, which emerged later, has been interested in the relations between the self and significant others as mirroring and idealizing "self-objects." Stolorow's "inter-subjective perspective" emerged from self psychology as a full-fledged multi-person point of view. This article considers the significance of contemporary object relations theory and self psychology as relational, multi-person perspectives in terms of their application to group psychotherapy, focusing upon the group-as-a-whole, projective identification, transitional space and object, and self/self-object relations as particularly useful constructs. A clinical vignette is provided.

James Wright's work is multilayered. Taken as a whole, which Annie Wright's beautiful compilation, Above the River, allows one to do, Wright's poems (as well as his masterful "prose poems") have a pattern akin to a mythic cycle. "Mythemes" (Lévi-Strauss, 1979) recur as dialectic opposites from one poem to another, whether the abandoned male and mysterious woman, humankind and nature, blindness and seeing, secrets and revelation. Suggestive and symbolic forms such as birds, horses, earth, sky, the destitute, rivers, and adolescence weave themselves throughout in inner and outer "landscapes" of images and experiential moments. There is a frequent shift of "gestalts" between the inner world and external reality. Such a "blooming, buzzing confusion" of internal and external referents might appear to be psychotic and imply a loss of "reality testing." Chassaguet-Smirgel (1988), citing Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray as an example, contended that the artist narrowly averts psychosis by transforming it into a work of art. Surrealists, for whom the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan was an important figure (cf. Sarup, 1992, pp. 17-27), elevated psychosis to the status of art, and Wright has been considered to be a surrealistic poet, although he himself denied such an affiliation. Hall (Wright, 1990, Introduction, pp. xxiii-xxxvii) suggests that Wright, in addition to an extensive history of alcoholism, from which he seemed to recover towards the end of his life, suffered from a major mental illness, which included episodes of severe depression, hospitalizations, and at least one suicide attempt. The severity of the asceticism and the extreme damage to the self in some Wright's work suggests their roots in early traumatic experiences. (A terribly damaged yet heroic personage, whose disfigurement perhaps symbolizes the poet's trauma, is "Hook" [ATR, pp. 315-316], about a man who gives his last few cents to the poet with a hook replacing his amputated hand.) Not enough is known about Wright's childhood to attempt to reconstruct such a trauma, and a definitive biography is long overdue. (Wright died in 1980). However, the concept of "soul murder" as used by Shengold (1989) with respect to psychological trauma does seem pertinent. For example, Wright's powerful identification with the downtrodden, and especially with certain murderers (Doty, Judas) echoes the paranoiac Schreber's identification with his abusive father as "soul murderer": "I, myself, have been 'represented' as the one who had committed soul murder" (Shengold, 1989, p. 22, quoting Schreber). Certainly, the theme of damage to the self is prominent in Wright, and the poet's striving for reparation, restitution, and the restoration of lost goodness is not only characteristic of Melanie Klein's "depressive position" (Segal, 1980, pp. 76-89), which she saw as a normal developmental process, but also of the character structures of profoundly traumatized individuals. In addition, the rapid, "leaping" shifts of imagery in Wright's poems bear some resemblance to the shifts in mood and the dissociated and "autohypnotic" states (Shengold, 1989, pp. 138-154) of posttraumatic stress and related disorders. However much that may be the case, Wright's work moves toward healing and integration, and forces us to reconsider the psychoanalytic shibboleth that all that represents a lack of distinctiveness between self and other is pathological. This assumption denies the richness of that part of the psyche which originates in the symbiotic union of mother and infant. Wright's work does not so much force us to doubt our own perceptions of reality as it gently yet forthrightly guides us into other realms where feeling and thought are in dialogue, where the uniquely human and the universal mythos converge, and where--perhaps most importantly--possibility and transformation are imminent. The abandoned male persona and the mysterious feminine are part of that world, that cosmos, that Wright has cr

Throughout the development of object relations theory and self psychology, the importance of attachments, availability, absences, limitations, and endings have been factors that have informed theory and practice. This article examines the multiple meanings and impacts of terminations in group psychotherapy at the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and group-as-a-whole levels, from the perspective of contemporary object relations theory and self psychology. Emphasis is placed on the initiation of a mourning process, with the dynamics of guilt, shame, and aggression toward objects who are separate or inaccessible, and the experience of a shortcoming or absence, associated with a loss of self-object oneness, soothing, and idealization from the narcissistic sector of the personality. Therapeutic opportunities afforded by terminations and the importance of resolving countertransference reactions are highlighted.