Ruptures and Repairs in Group Psychotherapy: Introduction to the Special Issue

Objectives: All relationships experience tensions and ruptures, but not all ruptures are acknowledged and repaired. Individual therapy researchers have shown that repairing ruptures in the therapy relationship is associated with an increased alliance, decreased dropout, and positive treatment outcome. Until recently, there has been less attention paid to ruptures in group psychotherapy. The current special issue is devoted to theory, assessment, research, and practice regarding ruptures and repairs in group treatment. Methods: Group researchers applied self-report and observational assessment methods to identify and study ruptures in group psychotherapy and group supervision. Designs of the studies included longitudinal analysis, case studies, meta-analysis, and a practice review. Results: Studies in this special issue identified that the alliance is related to outcomes and that different types of alliance ruptures, including microaggressions, occur in group therapy. Alliance ruptures manifest themselves at different levels of group interactions (member to member, member to leader, and member to group), which reflects the complex nature of this multiperson therapeutic context. Conclusions: The implications for practice are addressed as well as a call for future research to examine different types of ruptures in group therapy. Group member and leader factors influence the nature of the ruptures. The complexity of the group context suggests that repair processes that take into account levels of interactions in groups. Findings from these studies lay the foundation for future research needed to understand the impact of ruptures in groups.