Using Groups to Help People

This new edition of Using Groups to Help People has been written with the interests, needs, and concerns of group therapists and group workers in mind. It is designed to help practitioners to plan and conduct therapeutic groups of diverse kinds, and it presents frameworks to assist practitioners to understand and judge how to respond to the unique situations which arise during group sessions. It deals with such issues as: choosing groups formats and structures to match the needs and capabilities if different populations of people observing and listening to groups, and making sense of what one sees and hears. problem situations, and how they can be turned into opportunities why, how and when to intervene in a group events which can occur in therapeutic groups which cannot occur in individual psychotherapy, and implications for the therapist uses and misuses of theory when planning and conducting groups planning and conducting research on one's own groups and those of colleagues. This practical and readable book will prove valuable to all those involved in making use of small face-to-face groups to benefit their members. It takes into account new developments in the field during the past fifteen years, including new writing and the author's further experiences and thinking during this time.

The opening comment directs the members to engage in some activity, or discuss some topic, and the members do not follow the instruction: they do something else, or nothing.

Book Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Part I Thinking about groups before any plans are made or actions taken -- Chapter 1 A therapist's purposes in conducting a group -- WHY BEGIN WITH PURPOSES? -- A THERAPIST'S OVERALL PURPOSE -- INSTRUMENTAL OR SUB-PURPOSES -- 1 Planning and conducting the group so as to maintain a general sense of safety at a level at which members feel safe enough to stay in the group and to take personal risks -- 2 Avoiding the irredeemable collapse of structure -- 3 Working towards the establishment and maintenance of norms, and shared beliefs and assumptions, which support the group as a positive medium for help -- 4 Utilising events occurring in the group for the specific benefit of individual members -- 5 Avoiding harmful consequences for the members of the group, for oneself as therapist, and for the wider environment in which the group is operating -- 6 Avoiding making errors as much as possible, and being ready to discern such errors as occur and think out how to retrieve their consequences -- Interconnections between instrumental purposes -- A RATIONALE FOR THIS WAY OF FO…