SOME MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN THE TERMINOLOGY OF GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY AND PSYCHODRAMA

Abstract

Sociometrically oriented group psychotherapy has found the term and concept "tele" useful as the agent responsible for relative, adequacy in reality test-' ing and relative strength of group cohesion. In contrast to tele transference indicates inadequate, distorted reality testing and relative weakness of group cohesion. Tele was discovered in the course of sociometric research when it was found that shared interactions in human groups deviate radically from chance and develop in proportion with their cohesion. But psychoanalytically oriented group psychotherapists-in contrast co the Freudian meaning ---often use the term transference so vaguely and all-inclusively that the reader gets the impression as if all group relations are transference relations. This existing confusion will cease if the difference between tele and transference is conscientiously pointed out in our literature, and applied in every analysis of groups