Group Psychotherapy of the Psychoses

This recent book takes a serious look at the field of group therapy and its uses for psychotic patients…The book first gives a background to the theory of psychosis. There is a dissagreement between Kanas and other therapists over using seperate groups for schizophrenic and bipolar patients or having groups of mixed diagnosis. since this book is based on a wide range of authors crossing international and theoretical bounderies, there are many views of the origin and treatment of psychosis with diverse emphases on the weight of biological, intrapersonal and interpersonal…This is a distinguished and thoughtful book with its integration of theory and practice, which also benefits from the rereading.

The book is essential reading for practitioners running groups, whatever the professional and therapeutic background. The papers are finely attuned to the qualities needed for effective therapeutic work and to the emotional impact of the work on practitioners. It is a well-constructed book with a useful guide on how best to use it. I found it absorbing and informative.

It would be useful for any clinician who deals with psychotic patients. The book covers information on psychosis, use of group therapy in psychoses, useful techniques of group therapy including ways to deal with resistance, empathy, and countertransference issues. It also provides information about training and supervision of group leaders. Volunteer workers' roles in group therapy of psychosis as well as confusional states in patients and staff are detailed. This enlightening book is enriched with multiple case examples. The language is easy to read. References are numerous and current. This is an excellent source about group psychotherapy of psychoses. Readers are well informed about various methods of this subject as technical information is provided along with training suggestions for group leaders as well as adjunctive treatment methods. I found this book to be very interesting and I highly recommend it.

At a time when mental health policy is swinging back towards social control, it is good to be reminded that there are alternatives to incarceration and psychotropic medication in the care of psychotic people. As this book reminds us, psychological therapies do play an important role, not only in alleviating the terrible symptons of psychosis, but also in restoring to people a sense of meaning and control over their lives.The text brings together a number of the world's foremost practitioners in the field to create a rich and comprehensive account of group psychotherapy theory and practice. The editors have sought to create what they call a 'spider's web' of ideas from which new understandings and therapeutic strategies strategies can grow.The text is helpfully divided into four sections: background and theory; training and supervision and counter-transference (an often neglected but crucial aspect of working with this client group), and the setting and context within which therapy takes place. The contributers write from a range of perspectives, from the clinical to the organisational. Of particular note is Diane Campbell Lefevre's chapter describing psychotherapy training for nurses within a group psychotherapy project. Nurses have a long and honourable history of involvement in such work, and may have to fight to keep it. This book will be of great help to them in that struggle.