On Group Analysis and Beyond: Group Analysis as Meta-Theory, Clinical Social Practice, and Art

By extending the views of Foulkes, Bion, Freud, and Klein, this book draws the outline of a group analytic theory and meta-theory by studying the paternal and maternal functions as expressed by the conductor and the group analytic group respectively and extrapolating them to the psychoanalytic aspects of Lacan and the structuralism of Levi-Strauss’s anthropological views. From this perspective, it investigates major group analytic phenomena, such as the role of money, envy, scapegoating and the regular or early ending of group therapy by patients with neurosis and borderline personality disorders.

Part of the book is devoted to analyzing how eating disorders or depression in psychosis can be effectively treated and how the defective function of dreaming in psychosis can be reconstituted through group analysis, and stresses the need for research into the neural correlations of dreaming. The book further explores the ways in which group analysis can be used in the domain of the social unconscious by probing the dialectic of desire and despair in the post-modern world. Its conclusion notes the similarities between group analysis and the art of music and illuminates how the act of conducting a group analytic group resembles the art of conducting an orchestra.