The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (77 page)

THE MONOPOLIST

The bête noire of many group therapists is the habitual monopolist, a person who seems compelled to chatter on incessantly. These individuals are anxious if they are silent; if others get the floor, they reinsert themselves with a variety of techniques: rushing in to fill the briefest silence, responding to every statement in the group, continually addressing the problems of the speaker with a chorus of “I’m like that, too.”

The monopolist may persist in describing, in endless detail, conversations with others (often taking several parts in the conversation) or in presenting accounts of newspaper or magazine stories that may be only slightly relevant to the group issue. Some monopolists hold the floor by assuming the role of interrogator. One member barraged the group with so many questions and “observations” that it occluded any opportunity for members to interact or reflect. Finally, when angrily confronted by comembers about her disruptive effect, she explained that she dreaded silence because it reminded her of the “quiet before the storm” in her family—the silence preceding her father’s explosive, violent rages. Others capture the members’ attention by enticing them with bizarre, puzzling, or sexually piquant material.

Labile clients who have a dramatic flair may monopolize the group by means of the crisis method: They regularly present the group with major life upheavals, which always seem to demand urgent and lengthy attention. Other members are cowed into silence, their problems seeming trivial in comparison. (“It’s not easy to interrupt
Gone with the Wind,”
as one group member put it.)

Effects on the Group

Although a group may, in the initial meeting, welcome and perhaps encourage the monopolist, the mood soon turns to one of frustration and anger. Other group members are often disinclined to silence a member for fear that they will thus incur an obligation to fill the silence. They anticipate the obvious rejoinder of, “All right, I’ll be quiet. You talk.” And, of course, it is not possible to talk easily in a tense, guarded climate. Members who are not particularly assertive may not deal directly with the monopolist for some time; instead, they may smolder quietly or make indirect hostile forays. Generally, oblique attacks on the monopolist will only aggravate the problem and fuel a vicious circle. The monopolist’s compulsive speech is an attempt to deal with anxiety; as the client senses the growing group tension and resentment, his or her anxiety rises, and the tendency to speak compulsively correspondingly increases. Some monopolists are consciously aware, at these times, of assembling a smoke screen of words in order to divert the group from making a direct attack.

Eventually, this source of unresolved tension will have a detrimental effect on cohesiveness—an effect manifested by such signs of group disruption as indirect, off-target fighting, absenteeism, dropouts, and subgrouping. When the group does confront the monopolist, it is often in an explosive, brutal style; the spokesperson for the group usually receives unanimous support—I have even witnessed a round of applause. The monopolist may then sulk, be completely silent for a meeting or two (“See what they do without me”), or leave the group. In any event, little that is therapeutic has been accomplished for anyone.

Therapeutic Considerations

How can the therapist interrupt the monopolist in a therapeutically effective fashion? Despite the strongest provocation and temptation to shout the client down or to silence the client by edict, such an assault has little value (except as a temporary catharsis for the therapist). The client is not helped: no learning has accrued; the anxiety underlying the monopolist’s compulsive speech persists and will, without doubt, erupt again in further monopolistic volleys or, if no outlet is available, will force the client to drop out of the group. Neither is the group helped. Regardless of the circumstances, the others are threatened by the therapist’s silencing, in a heavy-handed manner, one of the members. A seed of caution and fear is implanted in the mind of all the members; they begin to wonder if a similar fate might befall them.

Nevertheless, the monopolistic behavior must be checked, and generally it is the therapist’s task to do so. Although often the therapist does well to wait for the group to handle a group problem, the monopolistic member is one problem that the group, and especially a young group, often
cannot
handle. The monopolistic client poses a threat to its procedural underpinnings: group members are encouraged to speak in a group, yet this particular member must be silenced. The therapist must prevent the elaboration of therapy-obstructing norms and at the same time prevent the monopolistic client from committing social suicide. A twopronged approach is most effective: consider both the monopolizer
and
the group that has allowed itself to be monopolized. This approach reduces the hazard of scapegoating and illuminates the role played by the group in each member’s behavior.

From the standpoint of the group
, bear in mind the principle that individual and group psychology are inextricably interwoven. No monopolistic client exists in a vacuum: The client always abides in a dynamic equilibrium with a group that permits or encourages such behavior.
³
Hence, the therapist may inquire why the group permits or encourages one member
to carry the burden of the entire meeting.
Such an inquiry may startle the members, who have perceived themselves only as passive victims of the monopolist. After the initial protestations are worked through, the group members may then, with profit, examine their exploitation of the monopolist; for example, they may have been relieved by not having to participate verbally in the group. They may have permitted the monopolist to do all the self-disclosure, or to appear foolish, or to act as a lightning rod for the group members’ anger, while they themselves assumed little responsibility for the group’s therapeutic tasks. Once the members disclose and discuss their reasons for inactivity, their personal commitment to the therapeutic process is augmented. They may, for example, discuss their fears of assertiveness, or of harming the monopolist, or of a retaliatory attack by some specific member or by the therapist; they may wish to avoid seeking the group’s attention lest their greed be exposed; they may secretly revel in the monopolist’s plight and enjoy being a member of the victimized and disapproving majority. A disclosure of any of these issues by a hitherto uninvolved client signifies progress and greater engagement in therapy.

In one group, for example, a submissive, chronically depressed woman, Sue, exploded in an uncharacteristic expletive-filled rage at the monopolistic behavior of another member. As she explored her outburst, Sue quickly recognized that her rage was really inwardly directed, stemming from her own stifling of her self, her own passivity, her avoidance of her own emotions. “My outburst was twenty years in the making,” Sue said as she apologized and thanked her startled “antagonist” for crystallizing this awareness.

The group approach to this problem must be complemented by work with the monopolistic individual.
The basic principle is a simple one: you do not want to silence the monopolist; you do not want to hear less from the client—
you want to hear more
. The seeming contradiction is resolved when we consider that the monopolist uses compulsive speech for self-concealment. The issues the monopolist presents to the group do not accurately reflect deeply felt personal concerns but are selected for other reasons: to entertain, to gain attention, to justify a position, to present grievances, and so on. Thus, the monopolist sacrifices the opportunity for therapy to an insatiable need for attention and control. Although each therapist will fashion interventions according to personal style, the essential message to monopolists must be that, through such compulsive speech, they hold the group at arm’s length and prevent others from relating meaningfully to them. Thus you do not reject but instead issue an invitation to engage more fully in the group. If you harbor only the singular goal of silencing the client, then you have, in effect, abandoned the therapeutic goal and might as well remove the member from the group.

At times, despite considerable therapist care, the client will continue to hear only the message, “So you want me to shut up!” Such clients will ultimately leave the group, often in embarrassment or anger. Although this is an unsettling event, the consequences of therapist inactivity are far worse. Though the remaining members may express some regret at the departure of the member, it is not uncommon for them to acknowledge that they were on the verge of leaving themselves had the therapist not intervened.

In addition to grossly deviant behavior, the social sensory system of monopolists has a major impairment. They seem peculiarly unaware both of their interpersonal impact and of the response of others to them. Moreover, they lack the capacity or inclination to empathize with others.

Data from an exploratory study support this conclusion.
⁴
Clients and student observers were asked to fill out questionnaires at the end of each group meeting. One of the areas explored was activity. The participants were asked to rank the group members, including themselves, for the total number of words uttered during a meeting. There was excellent reliability in the activity ratings among group members and observers, with two exceptions: (1) the ratings of the therapist’s activity by the clients showed large discrepancies (a function of transference; see chapter 7); and (2) monopolistic clients placed themselves far lower on the activity rankings than did the other members, who were often unanimous in ranking a monopolist as the most active member in the meeting.

The therapist must, then, help the monopolist be self-observant by encouraging the group to provide him or her with continual, empathic feedback about his impact on the others.
⁵
Without this sort of guidance from the leader, the group may provide the feedback in a disjunctive, explosive manner, which only makes the monopolist defensive. Such a sequence has little therapeutic value and merely recapitulates a drama and a role that the client has performed far too often.

• In the initial interview, Matthew, a monopolist, complained about his relationship with his wife, who, he claimed, often abruptly resorted to such sledgehammer tactics as publicly humiliating him or accusing him of infidelity in front of his children. The sledgehammer approach accomplished nothing durable for this man; once his bruises had healed, he and his wife began the cycle anew. Within the first few meetings of the group, a similar sequence unfolded in the social microcosm of the group: because of his monopolistic behavior, judgmentalism, and inability to hear the members’ response to him, the group pounded harder and harder until finally, when he was forced to listen, the message sounded cruel and destructive.

Often the therapist must help increase a client’s receptivity to feedback. You may have to be forceful and directive, saying, for example, “Charlotte, I think it would be best now for you to stop speaking because I sense there are some important feelings about you in the group that I think would be very helpful for you to know.” You should also help the members disclose their responses to Charlotte rather than their interpretations of her motives. As described earlier in the sections on feedback and interpersonal learning, it is far more useful and acceptable to offer a statement such as “When you speak in this fashion I feel . . .” rather than “You are behaving in this fashion because. . . . ” The client may often perceive motivational interpretations as accusatory but finds it more difficult to reject the validity of others’ subjective responses.†

Too often we confuse or interchange the concepts of interpersonal manifestation, response, and cause
. The
cause
of monopolistic behavior may vary considerably from client to client: some individuals speak in order to control others; many so fear being influenced or penetrated by others that they compulsively defend each of their statements; others so overvalue their own ideas and observations that they cannot delay and all thoughts must be immediately expressed. Generally the cause or actual intent of the monopolist’s behavior is not well understood until much later in therapy, and interpretation of the cause may offer little help in the early management of disruptive behavior patterns. It is far more effective to concentrate on the client’s
manifestation
of self in the group and on the other members’
response
to his or her behavior. Gently but repeatedly, members must be confronted with the paradox that however much they may wish to be accepted and respected by others, they persist in behavior that generates only irritation, rejection, and frustration.

A clinical illustration of many of these issues occurred in a therapy group in a psychiatric hospital/prison in which sexual offenders were incarcerated:

• Walt, who had been in the group for seven weeks, launched into a familiar, lengthy tribute to the remarkable improvement he had undergone. He described in exquisite detail how his chief problem had been that he had not understood the damaging effects his behavior had on others, and how now, having achieved such understanding, he was ready to leave the hospital.

The therapist observed that some of the members were restless. One softly pounded his fist into his palm, while others slumped back in a posture of indifference and resignation. He stopped the monopolist by asking the group members how many times they had heard Walt relate this account. All agreed they had heard it at every meeting—in fact, they had heard Walt speak this way in the very first meeting. Furthermore, they had never heard him talk about anything else and knew him only as a story. The members discussed their irritation with Walt, their reluctance to attack him for fear of seriously injuring him, of losing control of themselves, or of painful retaliation. Some spoke of their hopelessness about ever reaching Walt, and of the fact that he related to them only as stick figures without flesh or depth. Still others spoke of their terror of speaking and revealing themselves in the group; therefore, they welcomed Walt’s monopolization. A few members expressed their total lack of interest or faith in therapy and therefore failed to intercept Walt because of apathy.