Η ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΟΜΑΔΙΚΗΣ ΨΥΧΟΘΕΡΑΠΕΙΑΣ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ (1960-1980)

Abstract

For most of the 20th century psychotherapies were only sporadically applied in Greece, and psychotherapeutic training was practically non-existent. Nevertheless, psychoanalysis had become known since the 1910s, and individual psychology since the 1930s, while different types of psychotherapy, including group psychotherapy, were being tried since the end of the 1950s. The article explores the history of the latter, from the first experiments in the end of the 1950s to the 1980s, when it was becoming more widespread. After examining the example of the Therapeutic Club of the Centre for Mental Health and Research of Thessaloniki (1965), the article focuses on the Open Psychotherapy Centre of Athens (OPC) (1980), where group therapy was the main treatment method. Employing written sources and oral history material from mental health professionals and former patients, the article argues that the OPC was a particular psychiatric institution, which, at the same time, was an example and vehicle of the dissemination of psychotherapy, the psychiatric reform and the politicisation taking place in Greece in the late 1970s and early 1980s. All in all, the article claims that the history of group psychotherapy in the 20th century was closely connected with a political vision of the “psy” sciences, which expected mental health professionals to engage in the interpretation and shaping of their society.