The Intensive Group Experience: A Guide. Max Rosenbaum and Alvin Snadowsky. New York:  The Free Press, 1976.  xiv + 210 pp.

In this book Max Rosenbaum, a leading theoretician and practitioner of group theory, and his colleague Alvin Snadowsky, Associate Professor of Psychology at Brooklyn College, have put together five essays on various aspects of group therapy and the group experience.

The first chapter by Rosenbaum is an historical account of the development of group therapy from its beginning to the present. It begins with the work of Joseph Pratt in the earliest part of the present century and goes up to the encounter movement, which is so popular today. Rosenbaum gives a workmanlike account of the field with almost no critical evaluation. This is rather surprising since in other publications Rosenbaum has stressed the need of a rationale for group therapy rather than the proliferation of technique, but as he says:

The practice of group therapy has been considerably in advance of its theoretical understanding and conceptual clarity. Since every major school of individual psychotherapy has begun to apply its methods of theory to people in groups, a good deal of confusion has ensued.