Leadership in Short-Term Group Therapy: Manipulation or Facilitation?

This paper identifies common themes evident in the six preceding contributions to this special issue of the Journal, and provides an overview of the rapidly burgeoning literature on short-term groups. The primary focus is on leadership style and on the conflicts that many clinicians experience about the manipulative implications of their more active therapeutic interventions in time-limited groups. Three leadership style dimensions, introduction of structure, support/confrontation, and openness/deception, are examined to differentiate the pejorative and potentially harmful aspects of manipulation from the positive and constructive aspects of more active interventions, which might best be called “directive facilitation.”