Citation

Roback HB, Romfh H, Bottari M, Lutz D. Child Abuse Negl. 1981; 5(3): 343-349.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this paper, group psychotherapy for adult women having similar backgrounds of abusive, pathological mothers is described. The goals of the group included: providing a support system to help the members cope with their destructive mothers, helping them to recognize how the conflictual relationship with their mothers generalized to other conflictual relationships particularly with abusive men, and helping the members to increase their behavioral repertoire for coping with their mothers' illogical and unreasonable demands. Unlike most treatment groups which take considerable time to develop trusting relationships, intimacy and cohesiveness among group members, the women in this group developed almost instant solidarity. This appeared due to their having a common bond based on sharing equally traumatic backgrounds and on their attraction to men as abusive to them as their mothers. Prior to the group, they felt that no one (including the individual therapist) could understand what their lives had been like. The solidarity in this group grew more intense with time which permitted deeper investigation of topics such as fear of unworthiness, closeness, and abandonment. Findings from a self-report questionnaire suggested that three of the five group members had achieved significant improvements in coping with their troublesome relationships with pathological mothers and abusive men. These three members attributed their gains to their new coping behaviors learned in group, the group's supportive environment, and the group's permission to examine fully the range of feelings they harbored toward their mothers and themselves.