Object Relations, the Self and the Group by Charles Ashbach and Victor L. Schermer. Published by  Routledge, London and New York, 1994,  300 pages, £14.99 (paperback).

This is an important book. The authors put forward what they claim to be a new paradigm for understanding the individual and the group: ‘The individual and the group have overtime become reified entities, ‘things’ compartmentalized into separate areas of investigation, thereby disguising the underlying unity of the processes of human interaction’ (p. 12). Their project is to construct a theory integrating current theories of individual personality and group dynamics. They suggest that the work of Freud, Bion and others already hints at their essential unity. What makes a more thoroughgoing synthesis possible now is the advent of systems theory, and of a theory of knowing which is transforming the natural and human sciences.

The book is in four parts. In the first part, the writers outline their new paradigm based on three premises. Firstly, that ‘inner and group life are linked by a communication system of verbal and non-verbal interactions linking members of a group’ (p. 13). So:

… the paradigm linking psychoanalysis and group dynamics calls for observation of … three or more systems or processes: the internal or intrapsychic system of the persons in the group; the system of communications and ‘acts’ among two or more persons; and the group-qua-group. (pp. 14f)

Secondly, that ‘the individual and the group emerge from a primal unity through the creation of a boundary which distinguishes one from the other’ (p. 17). Thirdly, that ‘the principle of complementarity accounts for the multidimensional nature of group relations’ (p. 20). The writers are proposing that their three descriptions are