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Cognitive and Behavioral Practice 23 (2016) 464-472
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A Logical Framework for Functional Analytic Group Therapy

Luc Vandenberghe, Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Goias

Functional analytic group therapy (FAGT) is based on the idea that, in effective group therapy, the problems clients seek treatment for
actually happen in the interaction with other group members, which allows the therapist to assess the problems and do therapeutic work
on them in vivo. This paper proposes a logical framework that describes interpersonal sequences in which functional analytic principles
help harness natural exchanges among group members for effective therapy. The sequences typically start when group interaction poses
difficulties to which the client responds with clinically relevant behavior, either his or her usual problem behavior or improved target
behavior. Effective exchanges in the group naturally weaken the problem behavior and reinforce target behavior. The group is an
ineffective agent when it reinforces problem behavior or weakens target behavior. The FAGT therapist continuously assesses and, when
needed, improves group interaction patterns by weakening ineffective group patterns and shaping effective exchanges in the group. The
article provides examples of these logical sequences and offers recommendations about making groups more therapeutically effective.

F UNCTIONAL analytic group therapy (FAGT) is an

offshoot of functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP;
Kohlenberg & Tsai, 1987; Tsai, Kohlenberg, Kanter,
Holman, & Loudon, 2012), an interpersonally focused
behavioral psychotherapy based on the functional analysis
of the client’s behavior in session and his or her parallel
daily life behavior. The FAP therapist starts building a case
conceptualization by identifying functional classes of
behavior that happen outside (O) the session, problem
behavior in the client’s daily life outside the session (O1),
and improved target behavior that would help the client
achieve his or her goals (O2). However, treatment
proceeds by the therapist’s contingent responding to
the client’s clinically relevant behavior as it happens in
session. The proposed mechanism consists of weakening
type 1 clinically relevant behavior (CRB1), referring to
in-session samples of problem behavior, and reinforcing
type 2 clinically relevant behavior (CRB2), being health-
ier alternatives as they occur in session (see Table 1 for
typical FAP and FAGT abbreviations).
The interaction that unfolds during the therapy hour
provides a space in which therapist and client work on
developing better ways of dealing with the client’s
difficulties as he or she experiences them in session.
Instead of using contrived reinforcement, the therapist
allows his or her actual reactions that naturally emerge in
Keywords: group therapy; functional analytic psychotherapy; group
dynamics
1077-7229/13/© 2015 Association for Behavioral and Cognitive
Therapies. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
a genuine, personal relationship to respond to the
clinically relevant behavior. The therapist who is real
and transparent will be most effective in weakening the
in-session problem behavior that matches the client’s
daily life problem pattern and strengthening healthier
alternative behavior in session that is functionally
equivalent to new daily life behavior expected to
contribute to clinical improvement.
Weeks, Kanter, Bonow, Landes, and Busch (2012) have
the logical sequence for FAP begin when the conversation
focuses on daily life treatment targets and subsequently
identifies functional similarities between daily life and
in-session behavior. An out-to-in parallel becomes evident,
when typical behavior of the client out in the world
generalizes into the session. This first parallel provides
leverage for therapeutic intervention focused on in-session
behavior. The therapist evokes clinically relevant behavior;
responds contingently to it, shaping in-session improve-
ment; assesses how the interaction with him or her affects
the client; and, once strong in-session improvement is
developed, in-to-out parallels are identified to support
generalization to the intended improvement in daily life.
This second type of parallel refers to functional similarities
between the gains the client realized in session and the daily
life situations where the improvements will be helpful.
Although FAP emerged as an individual treatment
approach, several authors have described applications to
groups. Besides capitalizing on the FAP principle that
interpersonal relations evoke in-session clinically relevant
behavior, group approaches pursued the possibility of
generating natural reinforcement, in the guise of peer
feedback in the group (Gaynor & Laurence, 2002) or
 Functional Analytic Group Therapy
Table 1
Overview of Abbreviations Used in the Model
• O1. Instance of the client’s interpersonal problems, as it occurs
outside the session.
• O2. Adaptive client behavior outside the session that has high
potential to contribute to clinical improvement.
• CRB1. In-session instance of the client’s interpersonal prob-
lems. Belongs to the same behavioral response class as O1.
• CRB2. In-session improvement. Target behavior belonging to
the same behavioral response classes as the O2.
• G1. Behavior by other participants—includes group dynamics
or cultural patterns—that promotes client CRB1 and weakens
CRB2.
• G2. Behavior by other participants—including group dynam-
ics or cultural patterns—that evokes and helps shape client
CRB2 and weakens CRB1.
Note. O1, O2, CRB1, and CBR2 are established technical terms in
FAP literature. See Tsai, Kohlenberg, Kanter, Holman, and Loudon
(2012) for a more detailed discussion of these terms. G1 and G2
are FAGT terminology. FAP = functional analytic psychotherapy;
FAGT = functional analytic group therapy.
sought to turn the group into a therapeutic agent intuitively
searching for spontaneous group interactions that evoke
and shape target behavior (Vandenberghe, Ferro, & Cruz,
2003). Others proposed the straightforward translation of
FAP treatment rules into instructions for group therapy
(Hoekstra, 2008; Hoekstra & Tsai, 2010).
What do these efforts add to standard practice?
State-of-the-art models of cognitive-behavioral group
therapy include member-to-member interaction among
the mechanisms of change. They acknowledge that
clients’ maladaptive interpersonal patterns can change
through learning in the group (Bieling, McCabe, &
Antony, 2006) and interpersonal dynamics in the group
can both undermine or enhance processes of therapeutic
change (Sochting, 2014).
Consummate cognitive-behavioral group therapists are
credited for intuitively using interactions among group
members, based on their experience (Sochting, 2014). They
modify maladaptive interpersonal patterns, focusing on the
effect a client’s behavior has on other group members, and
elicit feedback and address clinically relevant appraisals that
occur in session (Bieling et al., 2006). However, the lack of
references to empirical support for these claims implicitly
underlines the need for future research to examine group
interactions and their relations to outcome.
Gaynor and Laurence (2002) report encouraging
results obtained with two groups in a treatment consisting
of 16 biweekly 2-hour sessions for adolescents with
depression. During the first hour of each session, the
authors run a course on coping with depression, whereas
the second hour focuses on interpersonal learning in the
group using feedback exchanged between participants.
Hoekstra’s (2008; Hoekstra & Tsai, 2010) work explains
that interpersonal process groups offer a propitious
465
environment in which a variety of individuals can evoke
clinically relevant behavior; the group’s genuine interest
in the client will function as natural reinforcement. It
theorizes how to structure the group to evoke clinically
relevant behavior, how the potentially reinforcing effects of
therapist and group can be cultivated, and the therapist can
share interpretations of variables that affect client behavior.
Vandenberghe, Ferro, et al. (2003) discuss two case studies
of participants in a chronic pain group to illustrate the FAP
process in the group, while Vandenberghe, Cruz, and Ferro
(2003) use vignettes from early FAGT transcripts to contrast
moments in which the group is the primary therapist with
moments in which the therapist uses the group to evoke
and reinforce behavior.
Two points make the FAP concept of the psychother-
apy process particularly relevant for the group setting.
The first is the notion that problem behavior from the
outside world is supposed to show up in the group, just as
clinical progress shaped in session is to generalize as
improvement in the client’s daily life. The second point is
the notion that, where interpersonal exchanges prove to
be curative, natural (and not contrived) reinforcement is
most often doing the job (cf. Tsai et al., 2012).
The present paper presents an approach to group
therapy that is the logical outgrowth of these two
principles. Groups tend to meet the requirement for
real relationships. Real relationships make real-world
client problem behavior highly probable and are apt to
provide natural reinforcement for client behavior tar-
geted for development. In addition, they facilitate
generalization of therapeutic change to the outside
world, because they are in themselves a sample of that
real universe. This provides us with the frame for using
ongoing live group exchanges that come close to what
happens in the client’s daily life for treatment purposes.
However, this practice needs clear benchmarks. The
intuitive translation of functional analytic principles into
the group experience is a fragile process. Both teaching
FAGT and ensuring treatment integrity in research
require a reliable standard to compare practice to.
Thus, explicitly describing the logical frame for FAGT
may be critical both for clinical and research aims.
The model that takes up the rest of this paper emerged
from 15 years of teaching and supervising the application
of FAP principles in therapy groups. Following what
Weeks et al. (2012) accomplished for individual FAP, its
intention is to provide a formal description of the
underlying logic (see Table 2) and the turn-by-turn
sequences (see Fig. 1) that propel therapeutic change.
This logical frame may be a key tool for training new
group therapists and for ensuring treatment integrity in
clinical and community settings. It can be equally helpful
in forging the replicability that research into the
functional mechanics of group therapy demands.
466 Vandenberghe

Table 2 tional similarities, generalizing daily life behavior into the

The Group as an Active Agent in Group Therapy
• Similarity with daily life enables the group to evoke CRB. The
therapist identifies similarities between client daily life issues
and challenges presented by the group, and monitors daily life
problems generalizing into the group.
• Similarity with daily life qualifies the group as a diagnostic tool. After
observing the client’s difficulties in the group, the therapist
constructs hypotheses about how parallel daily life behavior may
throw a better light on the client’s case conception.
• Similarity with daily life enables the group to function as a
therapeutic agent. The group naturally responds to the client’s
behavior in ways that are similar to the consequences the client
would obtain in daily life settings. Similarity also aids in
generalizing the newly shaped behavior to daily life settings.
• The group may influence client behavior in countertherapeutic ways.
The therapist needs to monitor the group’s responses to client
behavior and, whenever needed, channel group behavior,
blocking G1 and evoking and reinforcing G2.
• The group may miss important opportunities to reinforce CRB2. The
therapist than scoops the CRB2 up, allowing it to evoke a
response in the group that can reinforce the CRB2.
Fig. 1 detaches different pathways from the general
group therapy process. The following section describes
the steps involved in advancing from identifying func-
group, shaping in-session improvement, assessing how the
interaction affected the client, and generalizing improve-
ment back to daily life. This basic FAP sequence, as
described by Weeks and colleagues (2012), readily shows
up in FAGT sessions. Later sections describe other
patterns that involve the group in a more active role.
One sequence starts when the client’s interaction in the
group makes a previously not-identified problem behav-
ior visible. In another sequence, the group comes to its
own as a therapeutic agent, taking over the function of the
therapist. Finally, the group can function as a hindrance
upon which the therapist needs to act.
The Logical FAP Sequence Applied to
Group Interaction
The individual client’s case conceptualization defines
his or her daily life problem behavior (O1) in its
interpersonal context. This case conceptualization helps
the therapist identify the clinically relevant problem
behavior when it happens (right-pointing arrow to the
left in Fig. 1) and track the development of in-session
improvement (top up–down arrow) until it is ready for
generalization (right-pointing arrow to the right). As an

Group culture/climate

Therapist shapes
CRB2/mobilizes the
group to shape CRB2

Group notices
fully developed
Group CRB2/discusses
evokes Client emits CRB1/2 strategies for
CRB1/2 generalization

G1: Group weakens G2: Group weakens

CRB2/reinforces CRB1 CRB1/reinforces CRB2

Therapist weakens
G1/evokes and shapes G2

Fig. 1. A model of the interplay of individual client, group, and therapist.

 Functional Analytic Group Therapy
example, a pattern of withdrawal at the slightest rejection
in daily life (O1) may sustain a client’s social isolation.
The therapist watches out for the participant to shut down
after a group member ignores the client or in some other
way signals rejection. Through contingent responding to
the client’s efforts and by engaging the group to do so as
well, the therapist shapes better ways to deal with rejection
and then observes how this affects the client’s functioning
in the group. Finally, and again engaging the group, the
therapist promotes and tests generalization of improve-
ment to the client’s daily life environment.
As a more elaborate example, take Mrs. A, who is
seeking therapy for depression. Central in her case
conceptualization is her loneliness and her counterpro-
ductive solving of others’ problems. Over the years, she
sacrificed her once dearly held life projects to provide
unsolicited help, often to relatives who resent her
meddling. At times, relatives tolerate and benefit from
her effective problem solving, providing short-term
reinforcement for her interfering. Nonetheless, her
intrusive behavior also prompts relatives to avoid her
and challenges the development of close relationships.
In the group, Mrs. A smothers participants with care
and helps with the therapist’s tasks. When the therapist or
group members try to focus on her needs, she turns the
attention toward another participant, relinquishing her
opportunities. The therapist uses difficulties that naturally
occur in session to encourage Mrs. A to allow others to
solve their issues, and to negotiate reciprocally nurturing
relationships. The therapist selectively attends to her
requests only when they focus on her needs, and
facilitates favorable outcomes when she effectively nego-
tiates with the group instead of unilaterally imposing her
help on others. After healthier in-session behavior
develops and gains efficiency from session to session,
the group helps figure out homework assignments, in
which Mrs. A uses what she learned in session to build
nurturing relationships in the outside world.
The Group as Diagnostic Tool
As a collateral advantage of the likely generalization of
daily life problems into the group, therapists can spot
problems in session, before knowing of their existence in
daily life. The same evocative function of the group
(right-pointing arrow on the left in Fig. 1) that makes in-vivo
work on problem behavior possible can also work for
diagnostic purposes. How group members respond to one
another is often revealing about clinically relevant inter-
personal patterns, including both their own daily life
interactions and those of the person to whom they react.
When the therapist detects that a client behaves in ways
that thwart his or her interpersonal goals in the group, the
question to consider is “What can the way this client treats
467
other participants tell about the ways he or she frustrates
his or her needs in daily life?” When the therapist observes
reactions from group members that may help explain
the client’s daily life problems, the question is “What
additional understanding of the client’s effect on the
people he or she interacts with can I gain from observing
the behavior of the other group members toward him or
her?”
The sequence starts when the therapist notes the
problem in the group. When it is not clear what client
behavior the group is reacting to, identification of the
in-session problem behavior (CRB1) is the therapist’s first
task and may demand some work querying the group. In
other cases, the client’s behavior may be more directly clear
by comparing its effect on the group with what happens in
the client’s daily life. By talking about the behavior and its
consequences with the client in the group, new information
emerges that helps pinpoint functionally similar behavior
that may be causing problems in the client’s daily life.
Therapist and client launch an in-to-out search, using the
clinically relevant behavior (in) as a sample to which they
compare daily life situations (out). They then need to
define the daily life problem behavior, and conceptualize
the complementary daily life improvement and its corre-
sponding in-session improvement to include in the case
formulation. Often, other group members can be helpful in
this endeavor by disclosing more details about their inner
responses to the behavior.
Even if Mrs. A’s problem behavior, as described above,
had gone undetected, the therapist would note her
antagonizing the group members. After asking the
group how Mrs. A affects them and probing her about
similar interactions that may make her relationships
outside the group unfulfilling, the therapist would scan
her daily life reports for difficulties that parallel the
problems in session. Newly detected daily life problems
(e.g., imposing her help on people) would shed new light
on her case conceptualization, and help define goals for
improvement outside the sessions (e.g., building recipro-
cal relationships with her family) and target progress that
can be reinforced in session (e.g., asking the group to
dedicate time to her needs).
Clearly, the therapist must not heedlessly surmise that
every dysfunctional behavior in the group is clinically
relevant behavior that points at daily life problems.
Moreover, group members’ responses are not simple
replications of how others in the client’s daily life respond
to the client. Although often a somewhat accurate picture
of someone’s interpersonal impact emerges from how
different participants respond to a client, one particular
participant’s response to a client may be idiosyncratic.
The therapist must thus verify the hypotheses derived
from observed in-session interactions through careful
discussion with the client in the group.
468 Vandenberghe
The group also serves as a diagnostic tool in another
sense, as it allows tracking the client’s progress in vivo,
during the treatment process. Every time the group
interaction puts the client in a situation that involves
his or her typical difficulties, the therapist can assess
improvement in the way the client deals with the
situation.
The Group as Therapist (G2)
As a genuine social micro cosmos, the group harbors a
great many similarities with the daily life exchanges and
relationships that hurt the client. Group interactions
bring real-life challenges into the therapy room that
readily evoke clinically relevant problem behavior and,
more importantly, create in vivo learning opportunities
for the client, who can try out new interpersonal
responses in session (right-pointing arrow to the left in
Fig. 1). By responding naturally to problem behavior and
progress, or, as often spontaneously happens in therapy
groups, by disclosing how the clinically relevant behavior
affects them, group members weaken problem behavior
and/or reinforce improvement (up–down arrow in the
middle to the right). FAGT calls therapeutically effective
group behavior G2. Once the group shapes improved
behavior, the group’s similarities with daily life help the
new behavior find its way to interactions and relationships
outside the group (right-pointing arrow to the right).
Take another depressed and lonely client, Mrs. B,
whose sarcasm and scorn alienate people she interacts
with. This often earns her short-term support from an
amused audience but hinders positive connection. In
session, she mocks vulnerable members and derides the
therapist’s style. Group members soon start ignoring or
interrupting her. This evokes complaints from Mrs. B,
disclosing her need for attention, after which the group
encourages her to relate differently to its members. Later
disclosures and vulnerable expression of her feelings may
naturally evoke reinforcing responses from the group that
shape in-session progress without the therapist interven-
ing. By discussing how her behavior affects them and
comparing this with Mrs. B’s reports of her daily life
interactions, the group can promote generalization.
Generally, the positive reinforcement the group
provides consists of prosocial reactions that naturally
derive from the client’s improved behavior. Mrs. A, when
negotiating her needs more adequately, may evoke
cooperative responses. Mrs. B’s more mature ways of
making contact and obtaining attention should produce
better integration in the group. An important issue for the
therapist to monitor is that this reinforcement should also
be available in the client’s daily life (Vandenberghe,
2008), so the client’s natural environment may validate
the behavior shaped in session.
The Group as Hindrance (G1)
Although the group may be quite effective in shaping
healthier behavior in its members, the therapist should
not take this for granted. Some groups tend to reinforce
the actual behavior that causes the client problems in his
or her daily life and, in general, they often let in-session
improvement go by unreinforced (up–down arrow in the
middle to the left in Fig. 1). FAGT labels as G1 any
behavior by the group that reinforces problem behavior,
or weakens improvement.
As an example, Mrs. A’s group may value traditional
gender roles, provide articulated support for her unself-
ishness, and be grateful for her giving up her turn in the
group. When she focuses her needs in therapy, the group
does not support her in this and unwittingly pulls her back
to her previous behavior. For another example, group
members may support Mrs. B entertaining them with
her mockery. In early sessions, some participants applaud
her parody of an initially unpopular group member. In
a later session, the group turns away from her when she
acts in a sensitive and vulnerable way, weakening the
improvement.
Note that G1 (counterproductive) and G2 (productive
group patterns) are defined, based solely on how they
affect the client’s treatment goals. A pattern of group
behavior can be understood as either a G1 or a G2 for an
individual participant, depending on that participant’s
case formulation. Furthermore, the same pattern will be a
G1 in a specific interactional context, when it keeps a
client’s clinically relevant behavior from occurring,
reinforces problem behavior, or weakens progress and a
G2 in another interactional context, when it effectively
evokes and reinforces clinically relevant behavior. Only if
the therapist keeps track of the interpersonal events that
evoke and reinforce each of the target behaviors of a
specific client, will it be possible to recognize therapeu-
tically helpful group patterns.
The Therapist Intervening on the Group
Patterns of interaction that form in session build a
group culture or a group climate that provides the
pressures and demands each individual client will need to
deal with (right-pointing arrow on the left in Fig. 1). They
then shape the behavior by which the individual responds
to these challenges (both up–down arrows in the middle).
By identifying recurrent patterns in the group, the
therapist can predict particular group behavior and deal
with it promoting more helpful group patterns and
discourage counterproductive group responses (both
down-pointing and up-pointing arrows on the bottom).
Two tactics frequently used to affect the group patterns
have received the quaint names of channeling and
scooping up (Vandenberghe, 2009). We say a therapist
 Functional Analytic Group Therapy
channels group behavior when he or she influences the
group behavior that can then influence the individual
client’s clinically relevant behavior. As an alternative, the
therapist can scoop up a weak but important in vivo
improvement when the group misses it. The scooped-up
client behavior evokes responses from the group that can
then do their job, shaping the relevant in-session behavior.
In order to channel group behavior effectively, the
therapist needs to follow three specific rules: (a) be aware
of what would be expected to be unhelpful (G1) or
helpful group behavior (G2) in view of individual client
needs, (b) block G1 when it occurs and shape G2 that is
lacking in the group’s repertoire; and (c) keep track of
the effects the changed group behavior has on the
individual participant. Then go back to the first rule.
In order to scoop up a clinically relevant behavior,
the therapist follows three other rules: (a) be aware of
in-session progress based on each client’s individual
case conceptualization, and note the group’s response
to the healthier behavior when it happens; (b) amplify
the improved behavior or have the client repeat it
whenever the group misses it; and (c) note the group’s
response to the in-session progress and track the effects
this response has on the client. After that, go back to the
very first rule.
Channeling often combines blocking harmful group
behavior with amplifying effective group responses that
are too weak to influence the client’s behavior. Using the
example of Mrs. A, described in the previous section, the
therapist can try to block the problematic group responses
by asking participants to disclose their experiences with
rigid gender roles and with others taking advantage of their
sacrifices. Discussing these disclosures will also facilitate
group members’ prompting Mrs. A to focus on her needs in
session and to use opportunities for her personal growth.
Likewise, when the group reinforces Mrs. B’s irony, the
therapist may block this group behavior by asking select
participants to elaborate on how the in-session problem
behavior affected them negatively. By giving the floor to
voices in the group that tend to respond in a sensitive way to
Mrs. B’s need to be noticed and liked, but feel harassed by
her irony, a frail but potentially effective group response is
amplified, so it can do its job weakening problem behavior
and evoking in-session progress.
By scooping up a fledgling in-session improvement, the
therapist allows it to affect the group in ways that will
reinforce the behavior. As an example, Mrs. B makes a
caring statement about someone in the group. As a first step
in the development of a full-fledged in-session target
behavior, this small improvement needs reinforcement.
However, the group, that expects Mrs. B to amuse them
with her parody and irony, may well miss the progress. The
therapist’s task, now, is to scoop it up by asking to repeat the
statement or otherwise calling the group’s attention to it.
469
This helps the healthier in-session behavior evoke prosocial
responses from the group.
The two tactics intertwine easily. When the group
punishes Mrs. B’s vulnerable behavior, the therapist
typically asks her how the group’s response affected her.
The intention is to block the counterproductive group
response and scoop up Mrs. B’s sensitive behavior. If she
responds, instead, with an ironic comment about the
group, the therapist may turn to the group for an effective
group response, giving group members the opportunity
to disclose their feelings of hurt at being at the receiving
end of Mrs. B’s irony. This channeled group reaction,
then, would evoke vulnerable responses from Mrs. B that
would allow the group to attend to her needs, naturally
reinforcing her improved interpersonal behavior.
When the therapist needs to choose among several
potentially effective group responses, he or she best
channels those that both reinforce one or more target
clients’ progress, and constitutes progress for the group
members who respond to the target client. As an example,
imagine Mrs. C and Mrs. D have difficulties expressing
positive feelings effectively. It will be hard for them to
disclose how Mrs. B’s expressions of care make them feel
and they will fail to reinforce the improvement. The
therapist then takes the time to help them express their
positive emotional reactions to Mrs. B’s target behavior.
This, in turn, will allow Mrs. B and, eventually, other
group members to respond to Mrs. C’s and Mrs. D’s
improved target behavior of expressing positive feelings.
Thus, channeling a well-chosen group response can
initiate a therapeutic spiral.
Case Report
To illustrate the process, the cases of Jacky and Karen
were culled from a pool of clients who received FAGT for
depression. During the pretreatment interview, both
reported long-standing depression and several interrupted
and unsuccessful treatments with antidepressant medica-
tion and psychotherapy. They were classified as having
good outcome based on a pretest-to-posttest change from
26 to 4 for Jacky and from 24 to 9 for Karen on a Brazilian
adaptation of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Cunha,
2001), after 4 months of treatment. Individual interviews
at 6-month follow-up showed they maintained gains.
Both came to a free community psychology clinic for
group therapy on their physicians’ recommendation.
During 4 months, nine women with either major
depressive disorder or mixed anxiety–depressive disorder
met once weekly for 90 minutes with two therapists. For the
first 2 months, the therapists met with considerable
difficulty in promoting group cohesiveness. Six members
were hard to engage in any activity. Three others repeatedly
pressured the therapists with random demands only to lose
interest when the therapists yielded. Jacky’s and Karen’s
470 Vandenberghe
passive stances paralleled their conduct in their daily life,
and for one of the participants (later referred to as Laura),
the erratic demands in the group paralleled similar
behavior in her daily-life environment.
Jacky, a 32-year-old janitor, sought treatment for her
difficulty in involving herself emotionally with her
husband. At intake, she reported a history of losses and
rejections and a youth dedicated to caring for her severely
handicapped sister. She believed others wanted to harm
her, and, with pervasive attempts to please them, tried to
keep them from hurting her. These efforts sustained her
submissiveness to family, husband, and colleagues, and
made it difficult for her to connect to people. Goals for
therapy included learning to allow others to take care of
her. In the first group sessions, Jacky was generally silent
and when she did talk, tended to ignore others’
responses. The therapist asked her permission to parse
her monologue, to allow other participants to respond to
her. This helped new ways of talking to emerge, by which
she started drawing interest from the group.
Karen was a 48-year-old single kindergarten teacher
who came to the group with complaints of sadness and
loneliness. At intake, she reported long-standing depres-
sive symptoms and more-recent anxiety. Since her teen
pregnancy, her mother had sabotaged her friendships
and she progressively became socially withdrawn. She
believed she had nothing of value to offer in relationships
and that she could not fend for herself. It was likely that
her lack of initiative helped maintain her depression. For
instance, she rendered her workday unnecessarily stress-
ful and unrewarding by letting the children dictate
classroom routines. She did not speak out when col-
leagues scheduled professional activities on dates she
could not attend, and repeatedly had her evaluation
affected by missing these events. Goals for change
included her learning to negotiate. During the first
few sessions, she acquiesced to anything the group
would decide, and, when challenged by other participants
for her unresponsiveness, signaled she felt harassed.
Several group members rewarded her display of helpless-
ness by defending her against criticism. Meanwhile, her
first proposals for group activities got lost in the group’s
turmoil.
Paradoxically, the continuous disorder in the group
did not only function as a countertherapeutic pattern that
left in-session target behavior unreinforced. While with
their families and at work, Jacky and Karen followed the
directions of people around them, the group, being adrift
during its first months, left them to their own devices.
As such, the group’s lack of cohesiveness deprived both
Jacky and Karen of external structure to cling to, and
compelled them to manage their needs without assis-
tance, evoking active negotiation from Karen and open
interaction from Jacky.
A watershed interaction occurred in the fourth session,
when Karen asked the therapist to reschedule the meetings
from the late morning to the afternoons. Before the start of
the session, she had enlisted several participants’ support
for her proposal. Jacky now faced a situation in which she
could have pleased the group by agreeing to what they
demanded and then having to deal on her own with the
problems this caused for her. At first, the group supported
the request for changing the schedule (a G2 for Karen) and
ignored Jacky’s feeble protest (a G1 for Jacky). One of the
therapists scooped up Jacky’s weak target behavior, giving
her the floor with an open question: “So what’s next?” Jacky
surprised the group by explaining exactly why she could
not manage coming to the session in the afternoon. She
addressed other participants who had not spoken out in
favor of Karen’s proposal and prompted them to share why
they did not support having the sessions in the afternoon
(a strong progress for Jacky). Karen responded by querying
each participant, including the therapists, about their
schedules and, after plotting everyone’s possibilities on
her mobile device, figured out that shifting the session to an
early-morning slot would best meet all group members’
needs—including hers (a powerful improvement for
Karen). Put to the vote by the therapists (an example of
channeling), her new proposal met with unanimous
approval.
In the fifth session, Jacky successfully rallied support to
overrule Laura’s pushing to cancel the next session
because another participant would not be able to attend.
Here, Jacky’s healthier in-session behavior built up a
group response that did not only reinforce her initiative,
but also functioned as a protherapeutic response (G2) for
Laura, blocking her arbitrary demands. In the sixth
session, Karen proposed a homework assignment for
Jacky, who accepted it, thereby rejecting another assign-
ment the therapists had proposed earlier. In later
sessions, Karen emerged as a still timid leader and Jacky
got better at expressing her needs. Both women’s
newfound abilities improved what they got out of the
group. Gradually, Jacky participated more freely and
started connecting better to others. Karen took more
responsibility for having her needs met in the group. In
the last session and at follow-up, Karen reported having
improved at keeping discipline in her class and negotiat-
ing practical issues with colleagues, and Jacky reported
feeling closer to her colleagues at work and to her
husband, and having taken to the habit of talking about
what she needed out of relationships.
Discussion
The logical frame for FAGT presents the group as an
interpersonal arena in which daily life problems are very
likely to occur. The client deals with real difficulties in the
group while genuine real-world interactions take place
 Functional Analytic Group Therapy
that provide contingent interpersonal consequences to
target behavior. As these interactions do not have
guaranteed therapeutic effects, the therapist must promote
therapeutically effective behavior and block counterther-
apeutic behavior from the group. Finally, the group’s
genuine real-life features facilitate generalization of the
new repertoires the client developed to settings outside of
treatment.
The literature has best explored the advantages of the
group as an evoking environment, and as a convenient
source of natural reinforcement. Gaynor and Laurence
(2002) consider that the peer group presents stimulus
properties that are likely to be present across depressed
teens’ everyday life settings. They build on structured
activities that provide a context for interpersonal behavior
and on spontaneous socialization in between activities
that create an atmosphere in which clinically relevant
behavior can emerge and peer feedback can acquire
qualities of natural reinforcement. The leaders prepare
the group for these functions by instructing participants
to be genuine and to give constructive (and at least
initially preferably positive) feedback to one another.
Hoekstra’s (2008; Hoekstra & Tsai, 2010) theoretical
description of how to apply FAP in a group points out that
the client’s interaction with the group allows the therapist
to witness relevant in-session behavior evoked by other
individuals. The therapist must observe, evoke, interpret,
and reinforce clinically relevant behavior as in individual
FAP, but can also ask participants to share what they feel,
and amplify the private experiences of group members. In
order to make the group more effective, the therapist can
foster relationships among its members, teach the group
to watch out for relevant behavior, and prompt reinforc-
ing responses to individual client progress.
Vandenberghe, Cruz, et al. (2003) illustrate how one
participant’s in-session problem or target behavior evokes
another’s problem or target behavior and how the group
leader monitors interactions between different clients’
clinically relevant behavior, allowing the natural contingen-
cies in the group do their job in shaping both participants’
behavior. Vignettes show how an in-session sample of
problem behavior affects the group in the same way it
affects the client’s other social environments and how group
interactions push for therapeutic change (the process here
identified as G2). They contrast this to other examples,
where the therapist, enlisting the help of the group,
reinforces selected target behavior. In the first vignettes,
participants obtain unprompted and actually relevant
consequences, and the task of the therapist focuses on the
functional analytic management of spontaneous exchanges
among group members. In the other examples, the therapist
delivers the reinforcement, or prompts the group to do so.
The distinction between the two approaches is clear
in the present model. In the top panel of Fig. 1, the
471
therapist’s main task refers to influencing individual
clients’ clinically relevant behavior. In the sequences
depicted in the bottom half, the therapist interacts with
the group dynamics. He or she continuously analyzes how
one person’s in-session problem behavior can evoke
another’s problem behavior or target behavior, and how
one person’s in-session improvement can reinforce
another’s progress or block his or her problem behavior.
Comparing his or her functional analysis of what happens
in the group with reports of experiences in each client’s
daily life, the therapist will be able to guarantee maximum
space for healing interactions (channeling) and to aid any
improvement to affect the group (scooping up).
The group’s spontaneous behavior is not an ambient
condition in which to conduct therapy or a delivery
system for the interventions, but an essential ingredient of
the group therapy process. The description of the group
as a therapist, hindrance, and diagnostic tool expands the
behavioral view of group therapy, with a broader scope for
functional analysis. Previous models of behavioral group
psychotherapy have not articulated these functions as an
essential process. The up–down arrows between the G1
and G2 panels and the central CRB1/2 panel in Fig. 1
show where the ongoing context of the group interactions
influences clinically relevant behavior in individual
participants, while the latter behavior also influences the
occurrence of either therapeutically helpful or counter-
therapeutic behavior from the group.
The description of the logical sequences (Table 2) and
their intertwining (Fig. 1) makes it possible to train
therapists more systematically to deliver this type of therapy.
It helps assess the therapist’s interventions for training
and supervision purposes, providing a standard to which
supervisors can compare recorded interventions. For
research purposes, the different logical sequences help
map what happens in the group (e.g., by identifying the
contribution of specific sequences to outcome) or by
analyzing chains of sequences. The different pathways
described in Fig. 1 can inform dismantling research. Studies
can be developed to verify to what degree the top part of the
figure, where the therapist does the interventions with the
use of the group, contributes to outcome compared with
the degree in which the group itself does the job, with the
help of the therapist, as spelled out in the bottom half of the
figure. In addition, the logical sequences can be adapted to
the needs of time-sequence research.
This outline of the logical interaction in FAGT intends
to stimulate both practice and research on group therapy.
One of the strengths of this model lies in its inclusion of
group members’ spontaneous interactions as part of the
core process. It may be hypothesized (and in research
with the help of the model, verified) that interactions
among group members account for more variance in
outcome than current practice acknowledges. Making
472 Vandenberghe
these sequences explicit enables much-needed mechan-
ism-of-change research on a molecular turn-by-turn level,
where behavioral principles may be able to explain why
people in group therapy improve. The present article may
be a step forward in making the group therapy process
more accessible to functional analytic research.
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Address correspondence to Luc Vandenberghe, Pontificia Universidade
Catolica de Goias; Rua 232 n.128–CEPSI; Setor Leste Universitário; CEP
74605-140; Goiania, Goias, Brazil; e-mail: luc.m.vandenberghe@gmail.com.
Received: January 2, 2015
Accepted: September 24, 2015
Available online 21 October 2015