Group: Six People in Search of a Life - Hardcover

Solotaroff, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573220655 ISBN 13: 9781573220651

Publisher: Penguin, 1999

Synopsis

Six bright, successful, and remarkably self-destructive people enter into a course of dynamic group therapy in an effort to recognize and overcome their compulsions, addictions, weaknesses, and family legacies. Granted unlimited access to the sessions and the patients' lives, journalist Paul Solotaroff captures an utterly compelling real-life drama as it unfolds. Against a ticking clock -- the prescribed period of treatment is ten months -- a wide range of human tragedy and comedy plays out, imbuing Group with the pacing of a thriller as we learn, finally, who triumphs and who is beyond help.

About this title

Review:

If you're the sort of person who sees the "talking cure" as the American disease, then the thought of reading an account of a New York therapy group might have you running screaming for the exit. However, that would be a mistake. Group: Six People in Search of a Life is a riveting, compulsively readable account of five people and their struggle to transform their lives.

"It's painful to listen to yourself, at least in the beginning, but the alternative is endless suffering", says Dr. Lathon (a pseudonym, as are all the names in the book), the therapist of this group. This book is not a self-help text, says author Paul Solotaroff, but a "work of narrative journalism" perceptively documenting five highly-successful, tremendously self-destructive people living through a year of the powerhouse theatre of group therapy. With much intense emotional ditch-digging, Lathon teaches the group his vocabulary (pain is not to be confused with suffering) and helps them become acquainted with the texts of their wounds and wishes.

Solotaroff, who was once a participant in an earlier group with Lathon, is an accomplished writer who vividly brings his subjects to life. Their troubles run the gamut of dysfunction, encompassing every flavour of anaesthesia--sex, food, drugs, TV, alcohol, shopping, overwork and destructive relationships. Raw and surprisingly candid, these are real individuals fighting some of life's harshest battles; not everyone survives emotionally to tell the tale. The wealth of surprises and final twist at the book's conclusion will keep readers riveted up to the last page. Whether group therapy is ultimately an effective treatment or symptom of the pathologising of navel-gazing, Group is a powerful narrative of our time.--Fiona Buckland

Synopsis:

In a real-life drama, six successful but self-destructive individuals join together in a dynamic course of group therapy, working with a maverick psychiatrist to identify and overcome their problems and to find emotional healing and true self-awareness.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1573220655
• ISBN 13: 9781573220651
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384