Use of Small Groups in Training

• Preface -- Introduction -- The Training of General Practitioners -- Short Residential Courses for Post-Graduate Social Workers -- Staff Training in the Penal System -- Appendix: Illustration of a General Practitioners’ Seminar at Work 1

'One is struck immediately with the 'diversified portfolio' that characterizes the 'Tavistock method'. Here is no single technique stretched to cover a complex range of problems nor a jejune 'eclectic approach', but a blending of a wide range of tested principles into a method which promises through further development to supply much-needed answers to questions concerning effective use of group methods. The hallmark of the Tavistock method is its timely marriage of psychodynamic principles derived from object relations theory as it applies to group functioning with the growing body of principles and techniques that have emerged from the fields of 'group dynamics' research and practice. Its extra dividend is that its architects have been sensitized to subtle dimensions of group functioning that can be probed only in the context of depth orientated group psychotherapy.As one more in a series of publications of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and the Tavistock Clinic on 'work in progress' the present volume is a welcome one. The urgent task of students of group behavior is to develop general principles and adapt them to the multitude of existing specific social contexts that can benefit from them. The Tavistock group has contributed to this goal by setting forth details of their experiences in a number of such contexts.'- Haskell R. Coplin, from his Introduction