Richard M. Billow’s Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis and Group Process

T his collection of essays represents Richard Billow’s clinical thinking over the last two decades. Averaging about one per year, he has become one of our most prolific writers on group psychotherapy. The chapters are on slightly different clinical topics which do not necessarily aim to become a “Big System,” but they cohere through style and thinking personality. Broadly speaking, there are two main themes: the group leader who is strong and active and the psychotherapist who relies on, but also invigilates, counter-transference. Each chapter contains a different “nuclear idea,” to borrow one of his chapter headings. Readers of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy will recognize several. For example, “It’s all about ‘Me’” (chapter 3); “Developing nuclear ideas” (chapter 9); “Reality testing and testing reality” (chapter 10); “The three R’s of group resistance” (chapter 12); “Psychic nodules and therapeutic impasses” (chapter 13); “Deconstructive interventions” (chapter 17) and “Witnessing: the axis of group” (chapter 18). These and other chapters form an impressive contribution by one of the experts of group therapy in the US. Corralling separate articles into book form requires some careful planning, and for editing assistance Billow turned to Tzachi Slonim who contributes an accomplished introduction, “Changing our minds,” as well as brief prefaces to anchor chapters to each of the five sections. “Changing our minds” would have been an apt title for this book, but presumably the publisher preferred to have Billow’s name and Group Process front and center for internet searches, so International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 72: 106–112, 2022 © 2021 The American Group Psychotherapy Association, Inc. ISSN: 0020-7284 print/1943-2836 online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207284.2021.1994330