Beyond Dependency

Abstract

This chapter details what the Chinese therapists leaned from years of study with us and summarizes some of the papers they wrote for a conference they held about group therapy in China. The newly trained group therapists began to feel confident in their own competence and demonstrated their understanding of the theory and technique of group therapy. Their papers stress their awareness of the cultural differences contained in the permission for greater emotional expressiveness. They wrote about group cohesion and the uses of therapist self-disclosure. Existential factors of taking responsibility for one’s life also figured prominently in their understanding of group therapy.