The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
The standard text on group work anywhere in the world, in its sixth edition.
Essential resource for learning and enhancing group leadership skills for all types of groups.
Yalom and Leszcz set out the interpersonal theory of group work and the mechanisms that make it effective. The book identifies the therapeutic factors that operate in a functioning group, from instillation of hope to catharsis, and treats the group itself as a social microcosm in which each member reproduces the relational patterns they carry into every other setting. That premise gives the therapist a working method: watch what happens in the room, in the here and now, and use it.
Much of the text turns theory into technique. It addresses the leader's tasks in forming a group, selecting and preparing members, managing the opening sessions, and working with difficult members and ruptures. The sixth edition, revised with Molyn Leszcz and published in 2020, folded in newer research and chapters on online groups, trauma, and cultural difference. Clinical vignettes run throughout, showing how a group builds cohesion and how the therapist reads and steers it.
About the authors
Irvin David Yalom
Irvin D. Yalom (born 1931) is an American existential psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Stanford University. He is a central figure in existential and interpersonal approaches to therapy, framing much clinical work around four ultimate concerns: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. His textbook The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy remains a standard training reference. He also wrote Existential Psychotherapy, the case studies of Love's Executioner, the teaching guide The Gift of Therapy, and novels including When Nietzsche Wept.
Molyn Leszcz
Molyn Leszcz is a psychiatrist and group psychotherapist, and a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He formerly served as Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He co-authored the fifth and later editions of The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy with Irvin Yalom, and his research has addressed group treatment for people with schizophrenia and for geriatric depression. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association.
Details
- 1970
- English
- Basic Books
- Basic Books, 6th edition, 2020
- 832
- 9781541617568