Some Characteristics of Our Didactic Groups

Abstract

The objectives of our didactic groups are the following: The therapist should learn to control his emotions and to watch how his emotions can help other people and himself; he should learn to get an experience of himself; he should become aware of himself and develop an experience of himself in the group; he should be able to understand himself at different levels and develop each of these levels as much as possible. At the same time, we aim at enabling the educand to gain group experience and to experience the group as a whole. In this way, the educand learns how he can spread and deepen communications in his future group of patients; he learns how to make information so comprehensible and valuable that it serves at the same time as interpretation. Finally, he also learns to interpret less himself in the patient group, leaving it to group members to do the interpreting; in other words, he learns to prepare the group for interpretive work. In ego dynamics this can be achieved in the following way: in the didactic group the educand should learn to divide himself into two parts — one which helps his colleagues to develop group relationships, and the other which becomes a patient. The first role does not seem to be a major problem for the educand in didactic analysis.