Adolescents Grow in Groups: Experiences in Adolescent Group Psychotherapy. Irving H. Berkovitz (Ed.). New York: Brunner Mazel, 1972.  242 pp.

S. R. Slavson, that staunch advocate of and pioneer in the application of psychoanalytic principles to the group setting, has frequently cautioned against the use of traditional and precise analytic psychotherapy with adolescents. He has stated that

the essentiality of groups in the treatment of the young lies more than it does with adults in corrective relationships in the living situation, and all that it implies, in addition to reweighing of psychic forces.”*

As guidelines for the treatment of adolescents in groups he has suggested: (1) that group sessions be an admixture of exploration, discussion, evaluation, uncovering, and a modicum of didacticism; (2) that pressing actualities rather than the unconscious or preconscious alone form the content of sessions; (3) that the group therapist should use every opportunity to impart information which adds to group members' psychological literacy; (4) that there should be an emphasis on ego functioning and a therapeutic approach which is an amalgam of counseling, psychotherapy, guidance, and teaching. These considerations underlie the wide range of approaches and techniques in Adolescents Grow in Groups, a collection of twenty-two papers describing various group treatment modalities. Other salient commonalities of this volume are flexibility in the assumption of therapeutic stance, frankness in assaying success and failure, and interest in identifying and working with the feelings induced in the group therapist by the encounter with the group.