Goals of Group Therapy

Group therapy can become a very vital part of the social worker’s intervention with pre-delinquents and delinquents. If we look at group therapy with the delinquent population in terms of its objectives, it becomes apparent that group therapy can serve a number of important functions. One of the most important functions is the resocialization of the delinquent adolescent through contact with his peers (as well as an authority figure) in a real social situation. The fact that the group -- with its membership composed of fellow delinquents -- may have a greater situational resemblance to the real-life situation of the adolescent than an encounter with an individual therapist should enhance the likelihood of the generalization of results from the group situation to the outside world. The critical insights of members of the group can help each other gain an insight into their own difficulties, as well as the difficulties of other group members. Through the process of structuring roles amongst its members, the therapy group can achieve the objective of revealing distortions in role perception than the delinquent carries around with him. The members of the group can be set free to evolve new roles in the context of the therapy group as a substitution for the institutionalized roles that usually evolve from the expectations of the society or the authority.

Very often the goals of group therapy with delinquent adolescents involve having the individual deal directly with the behavior that brought him to his present institutionalized condition. In describing one particular program at Pioneer House, Dr. Fritze Redl aptly expresses this idea in stating that his purpose was not “to press or lure the aggressive child into simple surrend...

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...y not be quite so effective behaviorally. It is very easy to fall back on former pathogenic modes of behavior when given the proper social supports. Perhaps the group therapy situation is most beneficial if the individual is required to continue his participation once he has returned to the pathogenic environment, at least until the therapist is certain that the delinquent has mastered a new role for himself in his former environment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robison, Sophia M. Juvenile Delinquency: Its Nature and Control. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960.

Kvaraceus, William C. The Community and Delinquent. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: The World Book Company, 1954.

Schulman, Harry M. Juvenile Delinquency in American Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.

Cavin, Ruth A. Juvenile Delinquency. Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1969.