The dynamics of the social unconscious at work in the therapy group

Abstract

This chapter, originally a talk given in 2004 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Warsaw Institute of Group Analysis, reflects on the developments in group analysis in the move towards increased attention to the social unconscious. Hopper’s and Dalal’s approaches to the social unconscious provide the background to an exploration of challenges facing clinicians in accessing the social unconscious in group analytic therapy. Demarcations of difference, like gender, sexuality, class, colour, ethnicity, language, culture, nationality or other social factors, always contain a potential power differential and signal the need for analysis of the underlying social facts and forces. Subgroups that form along those lines are implicitly concerned with power relations. Clinical examples are presented to illustrate how attention to subgroup formation may provide an entry point to working with the social unconscious in the therapy group.