The Mexican social unconscious—part II: Politics and group analysis

The origins of the Mexican people and their impact on their social unconscious have been presented in the first part of this article. This second part starts with a discussion of the unavoidable need to include the political dimension in any group-analytic theory and enquiry. It then sketches the socio-political evolution of the country up to the present and its impact on the collective mood and relations among individuals and groups.

The Mexican social unconscious—part I: The roots of a nation

The social unconscious of a country or people is shaped by their origins and by the major collective traumatic experiences of their past. In the case of Mexico, this has been the trauma of the Spanish Conquest, that aimed to subjugate its originary peoples and obliterate their whole culture, language, and religion, which nonetheless subsisted subterraneously, syncretized with those of their invaders. It was a veritable genocide, both physical and cultural. The Mexican population was born from the mating of a brutal foreign conqueror and a subjected native woman, resulting in mestization, both physical and cultural. The psychic and social aftermath of these origins has been a deep ambivalence of Mexicans towards their identity and the foreign invader. This is similar to the fate of the unwelcome and abused child described by Ferenczi. Such underlying factors, derived from the collective history of peoples should be taken into account in any psychoanalytic or group-analytic enquiry of individual patients and groups.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, networks and introjection

Group analysts have not much turned their attention to Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. There is only one paragraph on it in this journal—and in fact it was in the newsletter accompanying it (Leal, 2013)—alongside a few incidental references. In part, this may reflect a general distrust of diagnostic labels, particularly those relating to disturbed development, defined medically. It may also reflect the recent lack of attention towards group-analytic formulations of specific psychopathological constructs. Instead, group-analytic writers have recently been particularly interested in the social unconscious and a more detailed analysis of issues of power and positionality. While this is necessary, and no analysis of people social to their core is competent without it, there is also space for a detailed consideration of psychopathology. To advance this, I attempt a group-analytic understanding of the concept of ADHD. I do this because I shall argue it is a clear example of the balance between projection and introjection, and that an adequate analysis of disturbance in a network must account for both sets of processes. I shall also do it to illustrate that such a group-analytic formulation should be possible, and to encourage further group-analytic formulations of other specific psychopathological constructs. Initially, I shall describe the development and utility of the concept, tying it to neurobiological findings, particularly those related to the Default Mode Network. Next, I shall suggest a group-analytic formulation. I shall then go on to describe the clinical implications of taking this approach, and shall describe how ADHD is too important to keep out of the analytic field, and suggest that group analysis has much to offer in the emerging discourse on social interactional neuroscience.

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

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.

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

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.

Psychodynamic intersectionality and the positionality of the group analyst: the tension between analytical neutrality and inter-subjectivity

This article proposes the concepts of psychodynamic intersectionality and intersectional group analysis by addressing the complex issues of the positionality, or self-location, of the group analyst when working with diverse and intersectional patient groups who have been traumatized by structural oppression, institutional and inter-generational othering. I critique the positionality of the group analyst and the essential intersectional and inter-subjective nature of the role and interventions they may or may not make in the group. The article engages with the need not to deny how an understanding of the positionality of the group analyst is central to the clinical frame. Such understanding can assist the clinician to engage with group members who have experienced structural oppression when othering dynamics are inevitably generated in the group matrix. Such dynamics are often being paralleled in the social unconscious and occurrences in society at any given time. I argue that a failure on behalf of the group analyst to reflexively position themselves in relation to powerful phenomena, such as, racism, sexism and homophobia and occurrences in the social unconscious risks a re-traumatizing dynamic being paralleled in the group matrix to the determent of group members from marginalized communities.

Theoretical Foundations of Social Psychoanalysis

The theoretical provisions of social psychoanalysis are based on the consideration of the following basic components of the psyche: consciousness and unconscious, individual and collective unconscious, social unconscious. Sigmund Freud one of the first has been researched internal incentives, under the influence of which, all mental human`s processes come into effect, which determine the motivational structure of human behavior. Through the prism of unconscious appetence, he tried to consider as the behavior of an individual person and the whole history of the development of humanity. Unconscious in Carl Jung’s understanding acquires a new meaning: it relates with historical and spiritual layers of humanity experience. It was Z. Freud and C. Jung who formulated the basic theoretical principles of social psychoanalysis about the “deep” and “peak” motivation of human behavior.