Although on the surface IPG seems to share many elements with Linehan's (1993) DBT, the two treatment methodologies are extremely different. Marziali and Munroe-Blum's therapists don't take a didactic, teaching approach at all; they revert more to a Rogerian, client-centered facilitation style. Group disagreements and disappointments with the therapists or other group members are worked out within the group by clients, with the therapists intervening only when the process of therapy seems to be getting off-track ("derailing").
Marziali and Munroe-Blum identify four possible subjective
reactions experienced by therapists when dealing with BPD patients in
crisis:
Therapist interventions in IGP are intended to be tentative, exploratory, indirect, and neutral. Two-sided commentary, reiteration/paraphrasing, reflecting doubt/confusion, answering of enquiries, and supportive statements are part of the IPG model.
The time-limited nature of the therapy, explain Marziali and Munroe-Blum, assures group members of "a predictable, safe, time structure. This factor has particular therapeutic value in treating BPD, they claim, because these clients have had "repeated experiences with unpredictable, unsafe interpersonal encounters in which the testing of boundaries frequently led to rupture. . . . the patients benefit from other forms of group structure, such as the invariability of the meeting time and place, the fixed duration of each session, and the dependability of the therapists.