In this comprehensive volume, Richard M. Billow provides a thorough introduction to group psychotherapy from a psychoanalytic perspective.
In this comprehensive volume, Richard M. Billow provides a thorough introduction to group psychotherapy from a psychoanalytic perspective.
Billow integrates contemporary psychoanalytic thinking with Freudian and Kleinian core concepts, as well as Bion’s early group theory and his later metapsychology, to provide a holistic overview of group therapy and its potential benefits for patients. He incorporates major psychoanalytic thinkers outside the American relational mainstream – such as Lacan, Laplanche, Kaes, Foulkes, and Pichon Riviere, as well as his own prominent contributions to the field – to provide a unique and interdisciplinary overview. Throughout the chapters, readers will be introduced to challenging clinical experiences that illustrate some of the similarities and differences among psychoanalytic and other psychodynamic group approaches. Offering guidelines on how to harness and conduct the group, Billow provides exceptional insight into the veritable benefits of maintaining an analytic stance within the clinical setting.
Written in a clear and accessible style, this book is a vital tool for students and professionals interested in a thorough overview of psychoanalytically-based group treatments.
Part I: Overview
1. Making Sense of the Group Experience
2. How Is Psychoanalytic Group Psychotherapy Psychoanalytic
3. Genealogy Part 2: Core Concepts
4. Group Process
5. Group Process
6. Vertical and Horizontal Vectors Part 3: Doing Our Work
7. Impasses and Opportunities
8. The Group as a Psychoanalytic Object
Richard M. Billow is a clinical psychologist based in New York, USA. He was the director of the Postgraduate Group Program at the Derner Institute, Adelphi University, New York and currently serves as Clinical Professor in Adelphis Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is the author of Relational Group Psychotherapy: From Basic Assumptions to Passion (2003), Resistance, Rebellion and Refusal in Groups: The 3 Rs (2010), Developing Nuclear Ideas: Relational Group Psychotherapy (2015), and Richard M. Billow's Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process: Changing Our Minds (T. Slonim, Ed., 2021).
