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The editors of this large volume have aimed to provide a comprehensive and eclectic survey of the basic principles, techniques and theories prevalent in contemporary group therapy.
The text is divided into four major sections. The first covers basic principles and includes a clear and fair-minded paper tracing the history of group therapy by E. J. Anthony who gives ample recognition to the various progenitors of the field. A section on specialized techniques describes an array of group approaches in contemporary use: group psychoanalysis, behavior therapy, family therapy and family group therapy, sensitivity and encounter groups. In this area the advantages and pitfalls of the cotherapist method are succinctly and ably presented by Rosenbaum. A paper by Toby Bieber delineates and clinically illustrates the reciprocal feedback and complementarity of the individual and group modalities in combined individual and group psychotherapy.
A third section addresses the group treatment of patients in specific diagnostic categories: homosexuals, children and adolescents, psychosomatic patients, narcotic addicts and alcoholics, married couples, the aged and group approaches in community psychiatry and in the redution of interracial tension. A fourth section covers training and group approaches in medical education and includes a poetically eloquent contribution by Grotjahn on the qualifications of the group therapist.
The difficult task of comparing the varying group psychotherapeutic approaches and modalities despite barriers of disparate theory and terminology is effectively handled by Spotnitz. This reviewer, however, would have preferred if the book had included a contribution by him on the handling of resistance or the group treatment of the borderline patient, specialized areas in which he is justly reputed.
The comparison between individual and group psychotherapy is made by Anthony who offers cogent remarks on the therapist's approach to the group setting:
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