THE CONTRIBUTION OF GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PSYCHIATRY

Abstract

Group psychotherapy was developed as a new form of treatment within the field of psychiatry. It began almost incidentally, primarily to save time for the overburdened practitioner. It was used for purposes of giving patients instruction about the management of somatic disease (Pratt (1)); to provide psychotics with some social interest (Marsh (2), Lazell (3)); to give instruction to teachers and parents (Adler (4)); to reach patients who otherwise were difficult to treat, like alcoholics (Metz! ( 5) and Dreikurs ( 6)) ; to facilitate the learning process in private psychiatric practice (Dreikurs (7) ). There are others who started around the 1920s what then was called Collective Therapy in Europe (Wetter- strand, Schubert, Rosenstein, Ozertovsky (8)).