You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
We are fortunate to have the pleasure of reading in English, Group by Claudio Neri, originally published in Italian. Neri brings to the English-speaking audience an integration of the French and Italian literature and well-known writings on the application of analysis to understanding human functioning in groups. Into this slim paperback, the author, a teacher of psychoanalysis and a group psychologist, packs volumes of analytic thinking and group therapy experience. This is no uneasy application of dyadic analytic formulations to treat individuals in a group. Instead, Group is an application of analytic sensibility to working with the group as an organism with a conscious and an unconscious life. It demonstrates the interpretation of the group unconscious process for healing. Neri specifically asks the reader to look at the group as an entity, a system with unique characteristics and healing potential. He takes tried and true formulations and infuses them with his own poetic passion and thought. The resulting text is clear, concise, and complex. Neri revisits Bion's theory of basic assumptions in group life and applies the concept of containment to the functioning of the group process. He refers to Foulkes' concept of the group mind, Anzieu's group skin, and Searles on individual learning from group experience. He introduces a new term “commuting” which I found useful for describing oscillation in the group leader's attention between the individual and the group, but his other original concept “genius loci” in the unconscious of the group I found hard to follow.
In his forward, Malcom Pines writes that this erudite, complex book is crammed with concepts, old and new. I agree with him, and yet one never gets the feeling that the book is in a hurry to fill or overwhelm the reader. In her preface, the late Parthenope Bion comments on the multitude and density of arguments presented and the liveliness of the interaction between the author's concepts and the older concep