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.
Leonard Horwitz has been one of the leading lights in the world of American group psychotherapy since the 1960s. In this volume he offers us a treasure trove of insights about the history of group therapy in this country, the theoretical and technical conflicts and disputes that have divided and challenged the field over the years and above all he spells out his own approach, developed and honed over many years of practice, teaching and writing about analytic group psychotherapy.
His title Listening with the Fourth Ear, plays upon Theodore Reik's felicitous phrase and title, Listening with the Third Ear (Reik, 1948), and it contains the essence of Horwitz's approach. Reik was addressing the psychoanalyst's focus on listening and perceiving the patient's unconscious communications in addition to the manifest content of associations, dreams and behavior. Horwitz takes this metaphor one step further. In addition to understanding the individual group member's dynamics via listening with the third ear, the group therapist “listens with the fourth ear” by tuning in to and utilizing the “underlying commonality occurring in the group” (p. 303) or the “group mentality” (Bion, 1961). In this way he aligns himself with the group therapists who value the unique opportunity that focus on the entity of the group itself affords clinical work and patient change in group therapy.
Horwitz writes with a voice of great experience and wisdom and he unhurriedly and thoughtfully describes the development of his own interest in and dedication to group psychotherapy and takes us through the developments and controversies that emerged in the field that he witnessed and participated in. Having moved to Topeka, Kansas following graduate school in 1958 to work at the Menninger Clinic, he was among the original “Young Turks” who persuaded Karl Menninger to permit a group psychotherapy research and treatment program as part of the clinic. Although written with modesty and calm, one can sense the ex