Psychoanalytic Knowledge of Group Processes

In this panel an attempt was made to clarify psychoanalytic understanding of group processes by the description of specific group behavior in small and large groups of different degrees of organization and by the articulation of explanatory concepts to match these descriptions. Similarities and differences in the drives and defenses of groups in comparison with individuals were emphasized. The relative neglect of the study of group processes by psychoanalysts was considered unfortunate by all participants.

Owing to a malfunctioning in the amplifier system, for the better part of an hour the panel on group processes heard what was being said at the object relations panel and vice versa. After the hilarity had subsided and the microphones were adjusted, Burness E. Moore, in his introduction as Chairman of the panel, turned the mishap to account, saying it symbolized the interrelationship of these theoretical constructs. Man's ego, he said, operates at the interface between two worlds: an inner one of self-and object representations and an outer one of real objects. It is constantly involved in intergroup processes across this boundary. Groups, like individuals, appear to be motivated not only by manifest overt aims, but also by tensions arising out of unconscious aims, conflicts, and defenses. A wide variety of such external groups inevitably impinge on the individual and play a role, through their internal representation, in shaping man's psychic