Evaluation of Group Psychotherapy

Abstract

Despite the popularity of group psychotherapy in its many different forms over several decades, we seem to be little nearer to an understanding of how it works and how effective it is. This lack in our understanding stems largely from deficiencies in research in this field. Bennis (1960) found that research on group psychotherapy was more often based on descriptions, anecdotes and clinical observations than on systematic collection and analysis of data. Slavson (1962) found that many of the papers which he dealt with as the editor of International Journal of Group Psychotherapy ‘lacked in scientific discipline, and often drew conclusions from inadequate evidence’. Luchins (1947) felt that there was ‘a decided deficiency in the use of objective methods of establishing outcome of group psychotherapy programmes', and Burchard et at. (1948), in their comparative evaluation of fifteen reported programmes of group psychotherapy, concluded that failure to consider pertinent variables, the lack of operational definitions, and the absence of any frame of reference, made comparison of methods or evaluation of outcome almost impossible.