An Experiment in Group Therapy With Mental Defectives
Abstract
49 An Experiment in Group Therapy With Mental Defectives SAGE Publications, Inc.1955DOI: 10.1177/002076405500100108 G. de M. Rudolph M.R.C.P., D.P.M., D.P.H. Hortham Hospital, Bristol One has become so used to the idea that the result of psychotherapy is in direct relation to the time spent on it that we are pleased to publish this article to show that there are quite a number of categories of patients where even the shortest form of psychotherapy can produce beneficial results. - ED. MANY EMOTIONAL STATES occurring in mental defectives in M hospitals are very similar to those seen in persons of average or high intelligence. Psychopathic personality, hysteria, anxiety neurosis, depression, hypomania, mania and schizophrenia are relatively common. Paranoid conditions with their systematized delusions are rare, these states being more common among the highly intelligent. An over-emotional condition with overt aggression is common, and it is with this state rather than with those of more definite entities that this article deals. Psychotherapy in the form of deep analysis has been said to be impossible in the defective as the limited intelligence prohibits understanding of its full implications. This may be so, but very brief psychotherapy of a simple nature and in