ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the major theoretical and clinical perspectives underpinning various forms of group counselling. It takes as the primary differences between counselling and psychotherapy the following: length of time over which the group meets, the depth at which the members' material is treated, the use of transference, and the purposes for which the group is convened. When groupwork ideas were first being contemplated in the years before and during the Second World War, group leaders would sometimes give lectures on aspects of mental health. Once the group has begun, the work of the counsellor will vary depending on his or her primary theoretical orientation, the purposes for which the group is convened, and the particular point it has reached in its developmental natural history. The chapter has reviewed group counselling in Britain as it appears to one practitioner currently working in the NHS and who has been heavily influenced by person-centred, existential, and psychoanalytic ideas.
