Informed by Freudian, Foulkesian, and object relations approaches to individual and group analytic therapy, Konig and Lindner's extensive theoretical understanding of groups and individuals is saturated with a flexible common sense that moves comfortably between theory and practical application.

This book examines the ways in which we make use of the Group Relations model, set up in the experimental field of the Group Relations conferences, to understand and modify the functioning of working groups. It is based on a psychoanalytic knowledge of the psychosocial development of human beings.

Recipient of the 2017 Anne Alonso Award for Excellence in Psychodynamic Group Therapy, conferred by the Group Foundation for Advancing Mental Health, part of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. From the Couch to the Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice is a handbook of group therapy and a guide to the group-analytic model - the prevailing form of group therapy in Europe. The book draws on both John Schlapobersky’s engagement as a practitioner and the words and experience of people in groups as they face psychotherapy’s key challenges - understanding and change. This book provides a manual of practice for therapists’ use that includes detailed descriptions of groups at work; accounts of therapists’ own experience and the issues they face in themselves and in their groups. The book is devoted to the Group-Analytic model but the other principally psychodynamic models of group therapy - the Tavistock, Interpersonal, Psychodynamic, Modern Analytic and Structural/Systemic models - are brought into a comparative discussion and drawn upon to create an integrated and coherent approach. The book is divided into three sections: Foundations – aimed at practitioners using groups of any kind and working at every level, including those providing supportive psychotherapy and providing groups for psychosis, trauma, the elderly, people at risk, the elderly and children; The Group-Analytic Model – defines the group-analytic model at a basic and advanced level; The Dynamics of Change – aimed at group analysts, psychotherapists and psychologists providing short-term psychotherapy and long-term group analysis The book is illustrated with clinical vignettes including incisive, instructive commentaries to explain the concepts in use. It is intended for those seeking psychotherapy, whether to resolve personal problems or to find new sources of meaning in their lives. It is also intended for policy-makers in mental health, students of different models of psychotherapy and the psychosocial field. The comparative discussion running through the text about methods and models of practice will likely be of interest to the wider mental health and psychotherapy fields. The author draws together the inherited wisdom of group analysis since Foulkes’ time and makes his own lasting contribution. From the Couch to the Circle will be an invaluable, accessible resource for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, family therapists, academics, psychologists, mental health practitioners, academics and teachers in psychotherapy.

First published in English in 1982 and based on more than five years of experience with therapy groups in the author’s own practice, this book aims to introduce the reader to psychoanalytic group therapy. Assuming little previous knowledge, it presents the subject in a progressive and illustrative way, and gives a central place to case material that was otherwise rarely published. Theory remains in the background and serves only to direct light on to problems which arise in practice, such as working through the early mother child relationship and the Oedipus complex in the group situation, the theory of the group process, and the various forms of transference, including the group conductor’s counter-transference. The book’s special value consists in its practical non-dogmatic orientation, in its integration of a variety of conceptions about groups, in its vividly illustrative case presentations, and in the open discussion of the problem of counter-transference. Written in non-technical language, it gives a lively picture of how ‘the business of psychoanalytic group therapy’ is managed, and will be of value to group analysts in practice and in training, as well as those interested in a more general way in psychoanalytic group therapy and what it is all about.

This classic work attempts to present a comprehensive account for the lay reader of the principles and methods of group psychotherapy.

Not designed as textbook of psychoanalytic group therapy, the purpose of this work is to give an impression of the way that the author conducts group therapy and what he has learned in doing so. The emphasis is on the style and creative effort in therapy, and upon its artistic side.