You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This is an American book directed in the first instance to an American public but it could be read with profit by social workers in this or any other country which aims at raising the psychological standard of life for its inhabitants. It is a very practical handbook for persons actively engaged in recreational work and the chapters on theory are necessarily general and simple but include a sound minimum. The author's wide practical experience, theoretical knowledge and native insight have combined to produce a lively appreciation of basic psychological principles and a balanced outlook. Thus, although he is an expert on Group Therapy (a Lecturer in the School of Education of New York University, he is also Director of Group Therapy for the Jewish Board of Guardians and President of the American Group Therapy Association) his attitude is emphatically personalist; the stress throughout this book is on the need for flexible adaptation of recreactional outlets to individual needs.
The author deplores the too commonly accepted antithesis between education and recreation and urges that they have in common the furtherance of personal integration and 'total health'. Recreation can be integrative and prophylactic to the extent that it provides satisfying uses for impulses otherwise unemployable and thus mitigates the burden of 'civilized' frustration. For instance, under present-day conditions spontaneity tends to be unduly discouraged in both child and adult and should therefore be preserved at all costs in recreation. Recreation is not superfluous indulgence or dispensable 'amusement' but a necessary corrective of many unwholesome trends in modern life; it should be regarded as a vital factor in the promotion of personal and social well-being.