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.
The subtitle gives the essence of this book. The author, now Associate Professor of Sociology at Brandeis, from 1958 to 1961 gave a course at Harvard on Social Relations: Analysis of Interpersonal Behavior which utilized a special type of small group discussion, the so-called training group. The book is based on the material derived from this course. As the author states, 'One of the advantages most frequently claimed for the study of small groups is the opportunity it provides for examination of elementary societal phenomena in microcosmic form'.
In the introduction the author describes the two parts of the book as follows: 'Part I deals with some of the vicissitudes of the group's orientation to its formal leader, pointing out certain parallels with the rituals and beliefs of larger social entities and speculating about the possible principles underlying these variegated social phenomena. Part II is an attempt to generalize and extend these observations—to approach a more abstract conceptualization of these issues in group formation and development. The memberleader phenomena are placed in the larger context of changes in the nature of group bonds and these are, in turn, related to existing paradigms of religious and mythological evolution. Fluctuations in the (conscious) awareness of individual and group boundaries are seen as the factor common to all these systems.'
The first part of the book is of special interest in connection with the application of psychoanalytic concepts to the development of groups and of group psychology, particularly those of Freud as given in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego and Totem and Taboo. The illustrations given from the training group sessions are most interesting and quite apt, seeming to confirm the ideas of Freud and others on the dynamics of leader-member interaction and group development. The author continually cites Freud's original explanation of group development and states, 'As we shall see, the corr