Editor's Introduction

In a tribute to the late Samuel R. Slavson on his eightieth birthday in 1971, Hyman Spotnitz recalled how his own appointment as psychiatric consultant to the Jewish Board of Guardians drew him, in 1944, into the circle of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers who were pioneering with Slavson in the development of group treatment methods. Commenting on the significance of his association with Slavson, Spotnitz stated, “In the process of consulting me as a psychiatrist, he helped to train me as a group psychotherapist.”

Spotnitz's report of his observations of emotional currents in a group of adolescent girls, published in 1947, was the first of about thirty papers or extended discussions of theoretical and/or clinical aspects of group psychotherapy that have appeared in the professional literature. From phenomenology he turned to basic theoretical concerns in his next two papers; one focused on group therapy as a specialized technique and the other formulated a psychoanalytic view of resistance in groups. Both of these papers were published in 1952, the year in which he began to conduct his first group in private practice. Clinical experience in this field and observations of the differences between individual and group analytic psychotherapy are discussed in The Couch and the Circle, published in 1961 and reissued in paperback in 1972

Supplementing his published writings on group psychotherapy are numerous lectures and contributions to panel discussions during recent decades. Three of these presentations, delivered years apart in diverse professional settings, are published here for the first time.

The first of these presentations is an academic lecture that was delivered at the annual training institute of the American Group Psychotherapy Association in 1961. In this context, Spotnitz focuses on the psychoneurotic state as a way station for the group