Das Geschlecht in der Gruppe oder Das Geschlecht der Gruppe? »Doing Gender« in der Gruppenpsychotherapie

»Doing Gender« in Group Psychotherapy: Does the Group Elicit Gender-Stereotypical Behavior? Gender and sex are, even today, two of the most relevant structural categories of societal organization. The present paper first reviews past research on gender and sex in (group) psychotherapy, then deals with an empirical analysis of interactional structures of one psychotherapeutical group (n = 10; 5 female, 5 male patients) from a "doing gender" perspective. The used interactional analytic method was the SYMLOG inventory as presented by Bales and Cohen (1982). In the examined group, women interacted and were interacted with more frequently than men. The distribution of interactions between the four possible gender dyads shows that the major part of interactions was exchanged between men and women. Only 12,5 % of interactions happened between men. Women uttered significantly more expressive-emotional statements. The other SYMLOG dimensions did not show stereotypical differences. While the group's women expressed an equally positive and negative image of theirselves, the men presented themselves negatively more often. The paper raises the question of (group) psychotherapy as a gendered setting induced by differential socialization. Group psychotherapy might favor women who have been found to have a more interdependent self-concept, while men strive more for independence and individual strength. The paper concludes with a request for gender-reflected psychotherapeutic and group psychotherapeutic work.