Power issues and power struggles in mental illness and everyday life

The paper outlines a psychoeducational group, used in an inpatient setting that has as its goal to make conscious and useful to the patient, certain power issues that influence all human relationships. This 11 session process allows the patient to explore the perspective to see if power issues and dynamics have been active in their psychopathology, and especially in their ability to engage in a therapeutic alliance, where they need to take a major role in the management of their problems, and not displace this expectation onto the doctor alone. The power issues involved are not, by definition, pathological, so applications to social problems are also involved. This wider application of these ideas to problems of bullying in schools, the workplace and in local governments are also explored and summarized.