A systematic combination of individual and group therapy seems to be a much more common practice in the United States than in Great Britain. One of the reasons for this is no doubt the influence of the ideas of S H Foulkes on the practice and theory of group analysis in this country. Foulkes, for reasons never fully revealed, turned from an attitude of considering a combination of individual and group work to be ‘optimal’ towards a view that group analysis will eventually deal with all psychological difficulties, and that if individual therapy was ‘at all necessary’ it should follow group analytic treatment.

In the States the influence of this great theorist and practitioner does not seem to have been quite so decisive, and various combinations of group and individual work are described in numerous articles. Even so there has apparently been no book until now which describes such an approach at this length. The book under review is said to be the first of its kind.