Introductory Remarks on Groups: Paul Schilder. J. of Social Psychol., XII, First Half, August 1940.

The paper is Schilder's contribution to a round table discussion on group psychotherapy at the meeting of the American Psychiatric Association at

San Francisco, June 9, 1938. This circumstance imposes limitations which are regrettable. The reader would have wished to learn more practical details about the way in which Schilder's group psychotherapy was conducted, especially what Schilder's response would have been to the usual objections which analysts make against 'analysis in groups'. These questions are not discussed. Instead it starts in a very general way with a summary of our knowledge about the formation of groups among animals, and continues with various theories about the origin of human society. Schilder holds that all these theories are one-sided, because many complex factors are responsible: the mother-child relationship, the father-mother-child relationship, homosexual attachments, common work and common needs, identifications and imitations, common traditions and institutions, sympathies and hostilities—coördinating factors which are not on the same level. In every society, there are individuals who do not adapt themselves. This happens under the influence of early and more or less unconscious experiences. In those cases sexual and social developments, which are closely interrelated, are disturbed either by inhibition or by regression. What has to be done is to make the pathogenic experiences conscious to such patients, to have them worked through and solved in a better way. In spontaneous groups, it is not possible to study the psychic structure of the group, which can be done in artificial psychotherapeutic groups. The first obstacle in such groups is the fear of the hostility of the authority, which first has to be lessened. It has been attempted to encourage the free expression of the groups' members by theater and other social activities. The discussions in Schilder's groups serve openly the psychotherapeutic purpose. Every member