Society And The Unconscious

The social unconscious and its manifestations in group analysis are the focus of this important new book of Earl Hopper's selected papers. Drawing on sociology, psychoanalysis and group analysis, he argues that groups and their participants are constrained unconsciously by social, cultural and political facts and forces.

In this book, the authors develop the theory of the tripartite matrix, consider music as a form of non-verbal communication as a sub-dimension of the matrix, and present empirical studies of the matrices of peoples in three societies in the Middle East. It aids in the project of group analysis.

'I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' we say in a court of law. 'In a court of law, the truth is precisely what we will not say', says Lacan. ‘If God is dead, everything is permitted’, writes Dostoyevsky. ‘If God is dead, everything is prohibited’, responds Lacan. ‘I think, therefore I am’, reasons Descartes. ‘I am where I do not think’, concludes Lacan. What are we to make of Lacan’s inversions of these mottos? And what are the implications for the legal system if we take them seriously? This book puts the legal subject on the couch and explores the incestuous relationship between law and desire, enjoyment and transgression, freedom and subjection, ethics and atheism. The process of analysis problematizes fundamental tenets of the legal system, leading the patient to rethink long-held beliefs: terms like ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’, ‘truth’ and ‘lies’, ‘reason’ and ‘reality’, ‘freedom’ and ‘responsibility’, ‘cause’ and ‘punishment’, acquire new and surprising meanings. By the end of these sessions, the patient is left wondering, along with Freud her analyst, whether ‘it is not psychology that deserves the mockery but the procedure of judicial enquiry’. A unique study on the nexus of Law and Psychoanalysis, this book will interest students and scholars of both subjects, as well as general readers looking to explore this perverse and fascinating relationship.

Working within the traditions of Bion, Turquet, Foulkes and Pines, and drawing on concepts and data from psychoanalysis, group analysis and sociology, this volume develops Earl Hopper's theory of the fourth basic assumption in the unconscious life of groups and group-like social systems within a social, cultural and political context.

This book will interest anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of the psychological relationship between individual psychological dynamics, social structure and the unconscious collective paradigms. It focuses on an analysis of patriarchal culture, which is, as it were, the psychological enclosure in which all individual and collective processes take place. Starting from the genesis and current structure of this culture, the strong social changes of the last 50 years are examined: the change in relations between men and women social relations in terms of solidarity and desolidarisation the situation of social security the social and political power relations, and the economic dynamics. At the same time, collective fantasies are elaborated that emerge from the socio-structural changes. The basis of the study is psychoanalytical cultural theory in the form of a cultural-critical deconstruction of its fundamental assumptions. In 16 interesting chapters, essential questions of psychological cultural theory are answered and practical applications of this theory to current sociostructural processes are shown.

The social unconscious is vital for understanding persons and their groupings, ranging from families to societies, committees to organisations, and from small to median to large therapeutic groups, and essential for comprehensive clinical work. This series of volumes of contributions from an international network of psychoanalysts, analytical psychologists, group analysts and psychodramatists draw on the classical ideas of Freud, Klein and Jung, Bion, Foulkes and Moreno, and on contemporary relational perspectives, self-psychology and neuroscience. Volume 1 is concerned mainly with the theory of the social unconscious. It is focused on topics such as location, sociality, the social brain, identity, ideology, the foundation matrix, social psychological retreats, false collective self-objects, the collective unconscious and its archetypes and social dreaming.

In this book, the authors develop the theory of the tripartite matrix, consider music as a form of non-verbal communication as a sub-dimension of the matrix, and present empirical studies of the matrices of peoples in three societies in the Middle East. It aids in the project of group analysis.

John Ralston Saul argues that while Fascism was defeated in World War II, its "corporatist" doctrines powerfully influence our own society today. Saul explores how these corporatist priorities have now become so woven into our social fabric that they threaten the practice of Western democracy. Our civic order, Saul argues, has been remade to serve the needs of business managers and technocrats. In turn, other parts of society have come to mimic this arrangement as they themselves fracture into competing interest groups and ethnic blocs, virtually eliminating the role of the citizen. This largely unseen social order has deep and vexing roots in Western thought. Saul examines how this structure is bolstered today by political and intellectual charlatans who misleadingly describe it as a "common sense" arrangement, rather than what it is: an insidious war of attrition against the individual as citizen and the delicate system of open dialogue and doubt that alone guarantees the future of democracy.