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In “Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psychoanalysis,” Freud stated that the opening of a personal analysis can be likened to the opening of a chess game. In both, only the initial moves can be spelled out with any degree of precision. The authors of the Practicum, a handbook of group therapy methods, are more optimistic about what
can be spelled out in this newer form of treatment. For those who are intrigued by group treatment and would like to venture into these novel therapeutic waters, this is the book of choice; the authors have drawn on their rich fund of experience to give the novice a sense of security, even a fleeting feeling of deja vu, amply demonstrating that the step from individual to group therapy does not require seven league boots.
Signposting these steps with abundant subheads, the authors lay out in each chapter the pattern of moves the therapist has to make to meet each evolving group development. Anticipated critical situations are identified, described, investigated, and analyzed, suggestions are then proffered as to how they may be resolved. These include phenomena, called G-responses, which are indigenous to group therapy and require special treatment.
In a chapter on developing a group therapy program, the authors, through the use of socratic dialogue, ably deal with the expected resistances of administrators, and introduce suggestions for a training program for group therapists which includes films and tapes.
The authors point up the trend toward pragmatic selection of group patients as against selection based on diagnostic categories. Today the group therapist evaluates the patient beforehand not on the basis of his schizophrenic or neurotic diagnosis, but on the basis of his probable actions and interactions with the other group members. Theoretically, there is a group for every patient, but the authors might have tempered their optimism by pointing out that in practice few therapists conduct enough groups to precisely accommoda