There comes  a time in the treatment of some difficult group members when all forward progress ceases  and the therapy reaches an intractable impasse. This is known as the transference resistance; and there are two different types; 1. the neurotic and the psychotic. In the neurotic transference resistance the group member says to me:” You’re just like my mother and I’ll ask:” in what way?”   In the psychotic transference resistance, the group member says:” You are my mother”.  Obviously, this latter one is treatment destructive. While the group member perceives me to be an object,  there is an element of health in their communication because the  member is making contact with me, albeit in a highly disturbed manner. To invite him/her back to reality, I’ll ask: “What feeling do you want me to have when you say that?”                                                                                                                             Actually, there may be a third type of transference resistance that is in between the two, and is the focus of this blog; I’ll call it the pre-oedipal transference resistance .  My approach  with this type of resistance is to” meet aggression with aggression”. Here’s how I handle it. The member might say:      ” You’re a mother-f&%$er”. My reply is: “I learned it from you!”  My goal is to help the member own the aggression rather than just dump it as they do in their personal lives, often with disastrous consequences. They don’t see how they come across in relationships and as a result, feel like victims when they are clearly not. But equally as important, it is crucial that the group leader not absorb the member’s toxicity. The leader should leave each group meeting with the feeling that they did a good job of facilitating the meeting. Leading a group should be enjoyable for the leader.

In a  paradoxical   intervention, when one such verbally abusive group member called me an ‘asshole’, I said;” How many years have you known me?  And you just figured that out?  What’s your problem?” When an oppositional group member keeps me in a fixed position, challenging every group rule and indeed, everything I say, my response is:” I wish I were as smart as you”. In  such a  group session, a member turned to the offending one and said:” That’s his way of saying he thinks you’re an idiot”.  That wasn’t  quite it– but it was close to what I had in mind.