March 5, 2026

Ever Wonder if You Should Join a Therapy Group? Listen In

Ever Wonder if You Should Join a Therapy Group? Listen In
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Apple Podcasts podcast player iconSpotify podcast player icon

In this show, Host Dr. Suzanne Phillips welcomes Dr. Elliott Zeisel, Psychoanalyst and Group Therapist whose award-winning televised series of an ongoing therapy group inspired Alexis Lloyd’s award-winning film, Group: The Schopenhauer Effect, just been released and about to be in theaters across the US. In this film, Dr. Zeisel plays the role he has lived for over 40 years as a Group Therapist of an ongoing group of diverse members who have been with him for many years. In the fascinating new film, leader and group face a crisis in the leader’s life that illuminates their personal issues and their relationship as group members in painful, powerful and profound ways. The film draws upon the theme of Dr Irwin Yalom’s renowned novel, The Schopenhauer Cure, which captures the pain, possibility, power and intensity of group therapy when the health of the leader is threatened. It is a riveting insider experience of group.

 

Dr. Elliot Zeisel is a psychoanalyst and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. He has served as the Vice -Chair of the Foundation for Advancing Mental Health. He is a founder of the Center for Group Studies and serves on the faculty. Dr. Zeisel has maintained  practices in New York City, Austin, Texas and Rochester, NY. He is an executive producer and actor in an earlier web series GROUP which ran for two seasons, released on Youtube and premiered at the Naples International Film Festival, where it won the Programmer’s Choice Award. . This feature film was shot three years later with the same cast and crew, with the addition of Thomas Sadoski in the role of the newcomer. It is already being released in theaters to much acclaim.  We have the rare privileged to speak today to the man behind the film and group therapist who plays himself in “GROUP - The Schopenhauer Effect.”