Group Therapy: A Practical Approach.

Dr. Johnson has attempted to write a practical guide to orient and instruct psychiatric residents and other students in his particular approach to group therapy. For those who are unacquainted with psychodynamics and cannot find their way in this area the book will be appealing and no doubt of practical value. However, his method is pragmatic and suffers from over-simplification. In his attempt to write a practical guide he has done much dis-service to the complexity of human interaction, especially because of his tendency to overgeneralize in interpersonal terms and to neglect intrapsychic phenomenon. As if one could ignore that aspect of human interaction. But, unfortunately, Dr. Johnson does do just this. He insists that it is incorrect or wrong to make individual interpretations in a group, insisting on only group interpretations. This results in many generalizations about the group when it may only be one member of a group