The Groups Book: Psychoanalytic Group Therapy: Principles and Practice

by Caroline Garland

This book examines the ways in which we make use of the Group Relations model, set up in the experimental field of the Group Relations conferences, to understand and modify the functioning of working groups. It is based on a psychoanalytic knowledge of the psychosocial development of human beings.

442 pages, Paperback

First published February 4, 2010

Reviews

[Paul Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly excellent book. I wanted to read it because I did not understand how the very two-person approach of psycho-analysis could be used in a group setting - well, the book certainly helped me understand that! Actually, it also taught me a lot about psycho-analysis as well as groups themselves. There is a fair amount of Bion in the book, but it is a well-digested Bion, so it really helps you understand better both what he was saying about groups and how those insights might actually be used therapeutically. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone doing any kind of group therapy (even if you are not interested in doing psycho-analytic group therapy or running very different types of groups). Another good aspect of the book is that it makes clear that group therapy is absolutely not individual therapy on the cheap!