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The term “group analysis” is distasteful to many analytical psychologists. Underlying their attitude is an assumption that the group is synonymous with an organization of collective standards, incompatible with the development of unique individuality, which is the goal of analysis. Jung, however, has stressed that individuation has two essential aspects, “an internal and subjective process of integration” and “an equally indispensable process of objective relationships” (Jung, 1944, Coll. Wks., p. 234). His statements that “individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself” (Jung, 1947, trans. p. 435) and that “relationship to the self is at once relationship to our fellow men” (Jung, 1944, Coll. Wks., p. 233) suggest that the concept of the self must include modes of integration which operate in interpersonal relationships. The importance of the study of transference relationships has been underlined by Jung and others, but it has been assumed, all too often, that, by extension from the material of personal analyses, valid pronouncements can be made about larger groups and about society in general.
Psychological development at any age occurs in, and is dependent upon, complex patterns of group relationships and it is vital that these should be studied directly. Knowledge of group psychology can come, only, from observation of groups in action and, as in every scientific project, this entails a limitation of variables by a more or less structured situation. Whatever the therapeutic significance of group analysis there can be no doubt of its importance for research.
In view of the comparative lack of interest in group analysis shown by analytical psychologists, a discussion of general attitud