Group cohesion from the perspective of patients, therapists and observers

The present study addresses the issue of to what extent the apperception and assessment of group cohesion within psychodynamic group psychotherapies by involved parties such as (a) patients, (b) therapist as well as co-therapist and (c) uninvolved observers cohere. A total of 65 patients out of 6 slow open therapy groups evaluated their individually experienced group cohesion on the subscale "Relatedness and Cohesion" of the Group Experience Scale (GES). The observers on the other hand used the subscale "Cohesion" of the Kiel Group Psychotherapy Process Scale (KGPPS) for rating the group cohesion. Likewise psychotherapists involved in the survey gave immediately after the therapy sessions their estimation of the group cohesion also based on the KGPPS. The pairwise calculated correlations of the three data sources display a highly significant concordance with high effect sizes between those three perspectives in regard to the estimation of group cohesion (p <.01).