From the author: I recently made a short presentation in which I very schematically outlined the main points of I. Yalom’s approach to group therapy. You can’t post presentation files here, so I had to get a little clever and make a mixture of an article and a presentation. Addressed to students and aspiring leaders of therapeutic groups. There is a lot of material, so it will be in several parts. Let's continue the conversation started in the previous article. Now is the time to look at how positive effects are achieved in group therapy. A distinctive feature of the interpersonal approach is the concentration of attention almost exclusively on what is happening in the room in which the group is gathered. A minimum of lyrical digressions, a minimum of conversations about external or past life. Actually, the person who came to the group does not need to tell anything about himself at all - the way he manifests himself in the group is quite sufficient material for work. The idea is simple. If our task is to help a person adapt to society and learn to build good relationships with others, it is enough for us to help him adapt to the group and build good relationships with the participants. He will then transfer this experience into his larger life. From this follow two principles of interactional group therapy: The group as a social microcosm. The group is usually heterogeneous, that is, the participants have different genders, different ages, different social status, different problems. As a rule, the group represents almost all the main types and roles that are found in real life. This is truly a cross-section of society. There is a huge scope for interaction and training of communication skills with a variety of different types of people. Here and now. The participant does not need to talk in detail about the difficult relationship with the boss. There will almost certainly be a participant in the group who is in one way or another similar to that very boss. You can see how the relationship between these two will develop right here in the group, analyze this relationship and correct it. This experience will then be carried forward into life. There are many different factors at work in a group that contribute to the therapeutic relationship. Yalom calls them “healing factors”: It would take a long time to talk about them in detail; a separate article is needed here. It is better to concentrate on those events that each group member experiences and which are unique triggers for change. I call them “life-changing events.” Maybe someone will suggest a better term: By and large, sometimes one of these events is enough to trigger therapeutic changes. But in a group, as a rule, a person encounters all three. A kind of cumulative effect. These same events occur in individual therapy. But there, feedback, acceptance and unique experience are experienced in interaction with one, specially trained person. In a group everything is much more transparent and intense. Accordingly, the result is faster. What happens to a person who is faced with life-changing events? Therapeutic change process is quite complex: The key point here is the so-called adaptive spiral. In essence, this is nothing more than positive reinforcement plus increased self-esteem. A person who did not know how to say “no” gently but decisively refuses another participant in the group, this refusal is accepted, the group supports the person who refused, his self-esteem increases and is consolidated (thanks to positive reinforcement) new pattern. We can assume with a high degree of confidence that next time it will be easier for him to say “no” to one of the participants. Gradually this experience will be transferred outside the group. It looks simple, but it works great. As, indeed, any simple and reliable mechanism. But for this mechanism to start moving, some effort is required on the part of the group leader. More about this in the third part.