Routledge The One and the Many: Relational Approaches to Group Psychotherapy: 21 (Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series)

Product Description The One and the Many: Relational Approaches to Group Psychotherapy applies advances in relational psychoanalysis to the theory and practice of group psychotherapy. In this volume Robert Grossmark and Fred Wright bring together leading writers in the group psychotherapy field, both psychoanalysts and group therapists, who have integrated ideas from contemporary relational psychoanalysis. Together, they constitute a vibrant and dynamic new wave in group psychotherapy and psychoanalysis that challenge much accepted wisdom and practice in the field, including classic group psychotherapy ideas regarding the therapist’s role, the group-as-a-whole and unconscious processes in group. In this book, Grossmark and Wright show how the development of relational psychoanalysis has had a transformative impact on the field of psychoanalysis that has reverberated in the group psychotherapy world. The contributors illustrate how the broadening scope of the contemporary relational scene offers much that coheres with and amplifies the theory and practice of group treatment. The focus on dissociation, enactment, trauma, mutuality and intersubjectivity in the clinical setting, the foregrounding of sub-symbolic communication and implicit relational knowing, the registration of mutual containment and mutual regulation, all open new and exciting vistas for understanding the process and healing properties of group treatment. The One and The Many expands the theory and practice of group psychotherapy offering innovative and refreshing ways to understand group interaction and to formulate interventions in both large and small groups. This book will be of interest and practical help to all who practice group psychotherapy, group process, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general, including all mental health practitioners, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors and pastoral counsellors. Review "The relational turn and group psychotherapy―once you say it out loud it seems so obvious that you wonder why there has not always already been such an integration! The underlying principles of a 'relational' or social unconscious,' intersubjectivity, 'the third' provide the theoretical scaffolding for synthesis, or at the very least engaged dialogue and mutual learning. With the publication of this book, Grossmark and Wright take the lead in bringing together cutting-edge theorists and clinicians who 'stand in the spaces'―'building bridges'―between individual relational and group psychotherapy. Relational psychoanalysis provides particularly fertile ground for systematic and thoughtful psychotherapy integration, and this book will invigorate the movement toward such clinical creativity."―Lewis Aron, PhD, Director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis  "This book is much needed in the contemporary group psychotherapy field. It breaks new theoretical ground, approaching group psychotherapy from the many perspectives that come together under the relational umbrella. With abundant clinical examples, it is an integrative, evocative, and very helpful volume for all who practice or have an interest in group psychotherapy."―Jeffrey Kleinberg, PhD, Fellow and Former President of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and Professor Emeritus, LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York "It is at the very heart of the revolution in psychoanalytic thought that is relational theory that human beings must be understood in the context of the web of relationships that frames their lives.Yet relational practice has been very largely confined to work with individuals and to the context of the two-person relationship in the consulting room. This book represents an important extension of relational thinking, both in theory and in practice, and should be read widely by anyone interested in how people live in the wider contexts that characterize so much of our lives.