Therapeutic Group Analysis

, This is not so much a new book?more a way of publishing again papers which ad appeared before. Dr. Foulkes carried out his first experiment in group treatment garly in World War II. He proudly records that this happened at 23 Dix's Field, t Xeter. He also mentions that, when he returned home that evening, he announced 0 his late wife: "An historical event has taken place in psychiatry today, but ?body knows about it." He saw to it that this ignorance was mended in the twenty-five years that followed, Uring which he gradually developed his own theory and technique. He called his fain child "group analysis". His enthusiasm for it has been infectious, and has ,!ade him into one of the leading spirits in this field of psychotherapy. His many 'scipies gratefully acknowledge his inspiration, help and practical guidance. Yet ey have found it as hard as anybody else to understand him, when he expounds, ?cally or in writing, his theories and concepts. , "erhaps it is an occupational hazard of psychoanalysis that some of its practitioners ^bp an inveterate habit of thinking and speaking vaguely and hazily. "I tend leave things unresolved in mid-air, incomplete (no 'closure')," is what Dr. Foulkes about his therapeutic conduct of group sessions. And he continues, as if to give Practical demonstration: "To bear this is important for the therapist of a higher and by the same token for the scientist." in. va8ueness may have started as a deliberate device, but it has become an 'Pediment in verbal communication. The reader of this book must learn to stay ^antically in mid-air for long stretches without any prospect of an early landing on 111 ground. Fortunately, he is helped in his task by the structure of this book, which ?sents the same topics over and over again in almost every chapter. Propositions ? lch strike one initially as obscurely oracular gradually gain in clarity after they Ve been considered several times from slightly differing points of view. For ample, when the concept of a "T" situation is first introduced on p. 74, its e eaning remains ambiguous. By the time the reader reaches p. 293, he finds this. HUally vague definition: "All psychotherapy as a procedure is a concentrated revision t, a specially designed and controlled situation. I have proposed to call a situation lhUs defined a 'T' situation." But by then the …