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I did not think that I would like this book. After all, it is American, which so often means jargon filled, and it's yet another in the How To Do … category. The notion that one can learn how to practise any variety of psychotherapy from reading a book has always struck me as fanciful. Yet my experience of reading this work has been salutary. Friedman has written an extremely accessible book which addresses many aspects of the group therapeutic encounter that assume importance to practitioners, yet are rarely written about. In the preface, he refers to the book as a road map, and he has a particular interest in offering practical guidelines to therapists working with groups for the first time.
In Chapter 1, ‘The first steps’, he assumes, interestingly, that a beginning group therapist will co-conduct her/his first group with a cotherapist and provides some sensible, uncontentious advice about choosing one. The subsequent section on models of supervision was less straightforward. Friedman's view is that the best form of supervision occurs when the supervisor is the cotherapist, principally because it provides a unique opportunity for a trainee to observe an experienced therapist in action. It would have been more helpful if he had made a clear distinction between learning through observation of an experienced therapist (a valuable learning experience for a trainee) and supervision proper. However, he makes valuable points about the limitations of supervision via verbal report, though his dismissal of what is the most widely practised model as one to be avoided wherever possible, seems pretty sweeping.
The next two chapters focus on referral, selection and screening of patients. Friedman covers a wide range of practical issues, concentrating especially on those tensions arising from the differential status between individual and group therapy, and those involved in deciding whether to start a group as soon as possible for fear of losing patients or to delay until a grou