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This recent edition of the collected papers of Louis Ormont offers a treasure trove of guidelines and strategies for use in mining the inherent power of the group as an agent of personal growth and maturation. Covering a forty-year period from the 1950s to the present this collection narrates the evolution of the author's intense and ceaseless study of the group processes as they unfolded in thousands of group sessions conducted by him.
The earliest papers address the preparation of patients for group therapy and the importance of the therapeutic contract in providing a structure in which the resistances of individuals and groups to telling the meaningful story of their lives can be identified and studied. Five seminal papers examine the cornerstone concept of resistance: the treatment of preoedipal resistance in the group setting, resistances to immediacy and intimacy, the management of aggression as resistance, and resistances conjoint treatment. A paper on the use of the objective countertransference written in 1970, long before the broad recognition of the value of using the induced feelings, illustrates the author's unusual prescience. Other papers carefully address the author's research on the development of emotional insulation in groups, facilitating the observing ego, and one of the author's major concepts, bridging. In addition, there is a valuable section on the training of group therapists.