Introduction

This issue of Modern Psychoanalysis offers a treasure trove of papers by Leslie Rosenthal. The selection represents an overview of the range, richness, and depth of Dr. Rosenthal's contribution to the theory and practice of modern group analysis. It also reveals his abiding interest in the group as a healing agent and his constant pursuit of understanding the phenomena that enhance it as a healing process as well as those that weaken it and/or threaten its integrity.

Always mindful of Freud's dictum that the overcoming of resistance is the essential work of analysis, Dr. Rosenthal has devoted his energies and very original talent for over half a century to the study and resolution of the manifold resistances that inevitably emerge in group interactions.

Dr. Rosenthal is one of the last survivors of that small band of pioneers in therapeutic interaction that began their careers at the Bronx office of the Jewish Board of Guardians, the birthplace of modern group analysis and modern psychoanalysis.

In reaction to the devastation and destruction he witnessed as a combat soldier in World War II, he experienced a deep need to become part of a life-supportive and reparative milieu. After graduating from Columbia School of Social Work in 1949, he applied to the Jewish Board of Guardians, which was one of the very few mental health settings in the country where social workers functioned as child and family therapists. He later completed his doctorate at New York University.

At the Jewish Board of Guardians he was interviewed and immediately hired by S. R. Slavson, whose pioneering work with children and adolescents in group therapy in the mid-nineteen-thirties attracted