The white mirror: Face to face with racism in group analysis part 1—mainly theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642199231
Author(s):  
Anne Aiyegbusi
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Trauma Response

Group analysis privileges the social and political, aiming to address individual distress and ‘disturbance’ within a representation of the context it developed and persists in. Reproducing the presence and impact of racism in groups comes easily while creating conditions for reparation can be complicated. This is despite considerable contributions to the subject of racism by group analysts. By focusing on an unconscious, defensive manoeuvre I have observed in groups when black people describe racism in their lives, I hope to build upon the existing body of work. I will discuss the manoeuvre which I call the white mirror. I aim to theoretically elucidate the white mirror. I will argue that it can be understood as a vestigial trauma response with roots as far back as the invention of ‘race’. Through racialized sedimentation in the social unconscious, it has been generationally transmitted into the present day. It emerges in an exacerbated way within the amplified space of analytic groups when there is ethnically-diverse membership. I argue it is inevitable and even essential that racism emerges in groups as a manifestation of members’ racialized social unconscious including that of the conductor(s). This potentially offers opportunities for individual, group and societal reparation and healing. However, when narratives of racism are instead pushed to one side, regarded as a peripheral issue of concern only to minority black or other members of colour, I ask whether systems of segregation, ghettoization or colonization are replicated in analytic groups. This is the first of two articles about the white mirror. The second article which is also published in this issue highlights practice implications.

scholarly journals The Social Unconscious in Action: Linking Theory to Group Work with Young Adults

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connie Geyer
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Individual Group ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
Psychosocial Processes ◽  
The Individual

Analysing unconscious anxieties and defences is essential to psychoanalytically informed approaches, including group analysis. While psychoanalysis focuses on the intrapsychic reality of the individual, group analysis studies the interrelations between intrapsychic and social realities as they are revealed in groups. Here, the concept of the ‘social unconscious’ has gained prominence in recent years. However, while there is an extensive body of work on the unconscious in psychoanalysis, the group analytic concept of the ‘social unconscious’ and its clinical applications are less well understood. In the first part of the article, theoretical contributions towards defining the ‘social unconscious’ are critically reviewed and discussed. In the second part of the article, the possibilities and limitations of the concept for understanding psychosocial processes are examined in relation to an anonymised vignette from a mentalization-informed psychotherapy group for young adults with a range of emotional difficulties. The article concludes with a summary and reflections.

A history of the struggle against racism in the social unconscious of group analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642098473
Author(s):  
Dick Blackwell
Keyword(s):  
Group Analysis ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Unconscious Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conscious Belief

Institutional racism is a social unconscious process. It is the collective operation of shared unconscious assumptions and values that exist in groupings and cultures such as group analytic institutions where individuals may consciously believe they are not racist. In such cultures this conscious belief is protected by unconscious processes of denial, avoidance and negation. Attempts to address the issue within group analysis reveal some of its problematic dynamics.

The body in group analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bracha Hadar
Keyword(s):  
Group Analysis ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bodily Sensations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Embodied History

This article explores the history of the exclusion/inclusion of the body in group analytic theory and practice. At the same time, it aims to promote the subject of the body in the mind of group analysts. The main thesis of the article is that sitting in a circle, face-to-face, is a radical change in the transition Foulkes made from psychoanalysis to group analysis. The implications of this transition have not been explored, and in many cases, have been denied. The article describes the vicissitudes of relating group analysis to the body from the time of Foulkes and Anthony’s work until today. The article claims that working with the body in the group demands that the conductor gives special attention to his/her own bodily sensations and feelings, while at the same time remaining cognizant of the fact that each of the participants is a person with a physical body in which their painful history is stored, and that they may be dissociated because of that embodied history. The thesis of the article is followed by a clinical example. The article ends with the conclusion that being in touch with one’s own body demands a lot of training.

38th S.H. Foulkes Annual Lecture: Intimacy and Social Suffering in a Globalized World

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Rohr
Keyword(s):  
Research Method ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Social Suffering ◽  
Central Question ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Annual Lecture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious ◽  
Globalized World

How is intimacy possible in a globalized world—and how does the loss of intimacy effect societies as well as individuals? This is the central question of the following article. It is argued that sociology alone cannot find any convincing answers, because we need to understand the unconscious dynamics of global developments that undermine the human capacity to bond and to experience intimacy. Group analysis offers quite a unique position ‘on the edge’, that allows us to observe and to connect, to analyse and to understand not only patients, but also people and situations outside of the clinical world. In this sense it is social group analysis that turns out to be a valid research method and an approach that is capable of deciphering the ‘social unconscious’. An extensive case study out of a research project about transnational children in Ecuador (South America) and the story of Daqui are offered to show what is unconsciously at stake in a modern and globalized world, how much intimacy has degenerated already and how this can be understood in terms of group analysis.

scholarly journals Corrigendum

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-288
Keyword(s):  
Group Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious ◽  
And Training

Trouble at t(he) Mill — Thinking about the Social Unconscious in Therapy and Training, Sarah Lloyd Jones, Group Analysis 49(3): 278–90. 10.1177/0533316416664000

The Social Unconscious and the Large Group – Part III: Listening to the Voices in the Wind

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 420-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Tubert-Oklander ◽  
Reyna Hernández-Tubert
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
International Workshop ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Large Group ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious ◽  
Large Groups ◽  
Group Part

This is the third of a series of three articles, based on the lecture we delivered at the International Workshop ‘Studies of Large Groups and Social Unconscious’, which took place in Belgrade in June 2013. In the first part we compared the British and the Latin American traditions of group analysis. In the second, we discussed the conception of the social unconscious and the group analytic large group, in both traditions. Now we present our own approach to large groups and discuss the problem of the wider context in which the large group takes place.

A Contribution to the Understanding of the Social Unconscious

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Brown
Keyword(s):  
European Association ◽  
Group Communication ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Initial Attempt ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Unconscious ◽  
The Individual

An initial attempt is made to discern more details in Foulkes's concept of the social unconscious, relating it to his deeper levels of group communication where it connects with, transcends and penetrates the individual unconscious revealed by psychoanalysis. The work of Earl Hopper is called upon as well as the findings of workshops conducted by the European Association for Transcultural Group Analysis. A tentative classification is proposed involving assumptions, disavowals, social defences and structural oppression representing blocks to communication and awareness within the field of relationships described by Giovanni Lo Verso as collective, transpersonal and transgenerational.

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