The Modern Contest: A Systemic Guide to the Pattern That Connects Individual Psychotherapy, Family Therapy, Group Work, Teaching, Organizational Life

By James Paul Gustafson

Book Overview

An examination of the realities of social groups which identifies the common pattern that connects individual psychotherapy, family therapy, group work, teaching, organizational life and large-scale social problems. This book provides advice for meeting the challenge of any given therapy case.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393700801
• ISBN13: 9780393700800
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A fine read

The authors approach groups, both large and small, contexually. The subject matter is handled in a rich and thoughtful way. This book is not just for mental health practitioners but anyone interested in post-structuralist thought.

This book is a master work by major league theorists.

THE MODERN CONTEST is a master work that deserves a much wider audience than it has received since its publication ten years ago. The scope of the book and its opening claim, that it defines "the common pattern that connects individual psychotherapy, family therapy, group work, teaching, organizational life and large scale social problems," is so vast that the volume was guaranteed a narrow readership probably from the moment it hit the presses. It is a tribute to W.W. Norton that Gustafson and Cooper's ideas, heady and raw-boned as they are, can be studied and savored over time. This is not a lightweight piece of theory-building, and the brilliance of the work only becomes clear after repeated visitation. One is reminded of Louis Armstrong's immortal statement about the definition of Jazz: "Man, if you have to ask, then you just don't know." These two jazzmasters have gone quite beyond the riff and jive of the typical book on group and organizational life. They do not tell us what we want to hear; they tell us what we need to hear.Having seen these authors in action in both large and small group settings, I was chagrined to realize how little I understood about the true genius manifest in their twenty years of collaboration and dialogue. Their combined insight is impressive, daunting, demanding, and inspiring.Gustafson, the psychiatrist-physician, writes the odd numbered chapters. Cooper, the psychologist-professor, is author of the even-numbered chapters. That curious structural contrapuntality tells the reader from the beginning that the band is rocking and this is no slow-dance. We are jerked back and forth in an almost primitive rhythm as these mind-drummers explain to us that "the modern contest decides winning and losing very fast," and that our post-modernist era is a battlefield beyond our simple-minded understanding of the way things appear to be.Throughout the book there are zen-like generalizations about the nature of group life. "Loyalty is the best introduction," they suggest, and "meeting crude challenges cheerfully is the least troublesome for our friends." What transforms this collection of globalizations into deeply valuable insight is the assortment of stories, illustrations, and self-reports offered by the authors. Their unabashed descriptions of failure, misery, suffering, and cruel hardship are painfully personal at certain moments. The most trivial rejection by peers or students illuminates a world of almost visionary proportion when seen properly through the lenses of interpretation and purpose. Who should read this book? I came to THE MODERN CONTEST as a longtime student and teacher of group process, psychotherapy, and personal growth. Anyone with those interests will be properly hammered by Gustafson, in particular, who has managed somehow to be an iconoclastic survivor in the maelstrom of academic life. One gets the sense that no matter how deep the confederacy of dunces surroundi