10 "Therapeutic Factors" : 💎 from " Theory and Practice of Group Pscyhotherapy" (Yalom + Leczsz)

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📔 "The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy" by Irvin D. Yalom and Molyn Leszcz.

awesome insights on how we interact, and how good group therapists create the conditions for transformation.

Their “therapeutic factors” are relevant to teachers, facilitators, coaches and others working in the human professions.

The 10 therapeutic factors

1. Instillation of hope

We need to have a sense of hope that where we're going could actually be better than where we are now. This connects to the central role that trust plays in the exploration phase of emergent learning. How can we help ourselves to feel and know that there is a better thing coming, that it will get better, that the process can work?

2. Universality

We’re not alone in our neuroses. The good group therapist is not better than their group, and we might be particularly hard on ourselves. Seeing other people going through common human challenges can help. How can we cultivate the sense that we are in this together, that we're all in the same boat?

3. Imparting Information

Interesting to consider how information → transformation. In the context of group psychotherapy, you're sharing how the process works, why we stay focused in the here-and-now, why we want to be authentic, why we want to self disclose, etc. In our own contexts, which information matters? How can we offer information that helps the people we're working with understand the process better?

4. Altruism

We feel good when we do good things for other people. I've seen this over and over again and wisdom workshops and in the classroom, when people feel like they can help other people by offering some perspective, or doing just some kind gesture. How can we create environments where this kind of altruism can arise?
5. Development of Socialization Techniques

A big part of our dis-ease with ourselves plays out in our difficulties in relating to other people. Practicing social and emotional relations to other people can help. In what ways might we facilitate our social development to help us feel less alone and approach our well-being together?

6. Imitative Behavior

Since we learn through mimicry, it helps to find good exemplars of who we want to be like. “What Would Jesus Do” is not an idle question, and this is not an abstract idea. What kinds of behaviors do we want to model? What norms do we establish in how we speak and act? And whose behavior do we want to copy?

7. Interpersonal Learning

This goes beyond socialization techniques, and they dedicate a whole chapter to this one. Other people are like mirrors to ourselves. How are we relating in the here-and-now? Are we aloof? Pretending to be lesser than? Where can we be ourselves with others? Who listens to us, and who do we listen to?

8. Group Cohesiveness

How much does the group feel like a unit? Are some people prized more than others? Are some given privilege where others are not? Those divisions create a lack of cohesion. When it's no longer us, we prevent therapeutic exchanges and can foreclose on interpersonal learning. How do we create and maintain cohesion in our groups?

9. Catharsis

When we experience profound emotions, when we're able to experience and let go, let an experience move through us, it sticks with us. This is part of the staying power of art and transformative education: it’s embodied, emotional, personal. How do we keep the space for the possibility of this kind of powerful experience?

10. Existential Factors

Yalom also wrote a seminal book on Existential Psychotherapy, which deals with the existential issues of our human situation: freedom, death, and the choices we make meaning with. How do we — or when might we — integrate the possibilities of making meaning and choosing what kinds of people we’d like to be?

These simple factors interplay in complex ways.

For some, being a part of a cohesive group is going to be the most important factor. For others, it’s getting good information about how a process works. For others still, it’s having a real sense of hope combined with arising altruism.

Hopefully this information will help us be more careful and caring to ourselves, to others, and our practice. Hope fully, it might help us reflect, gain insight into our existing patterns, and ask for meaningful feedback.