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Tempting though it is to plunge straight in, a few preliminary remarks are in order, particularly when one is writing from the other side of the Atlantic.
Group analysis brings together psychology and sociology, psychoanalysis and society, the personal and the political. However, it does not do this as a completed theory that can be used to produce explanations of various individual or social actions. It is instead a process of analysis, which is never completed. Each explanation adds to a new whole which can then be further analyzed. Students of Hegel will immediately recognize the process.
Moreover, it is analysis of the group by the group, including the conductor. So, what I have to say about the Clinton affair is merely one contribution to the debate, which is in itself open to be interpreted and analyzed. It needs also to be understood as an English point of view.
Group analysis is particularly concerned with communication, so we need to look very hard at the communication through which we are informed, or misinformed, about this whole business. In an analytic group, we hear directly what others say, and we see them saying it. We know them directly, and we have time to get to know them. But a public figure is very much a persona. A persona, moreover, that is significantly constructed by her or his own public relations machine and the media on which we are all to some extent dependent for our information about what is going on in the world beyond our direct experience. This is of particular importance in relation to Clinton because there seems to be a growing gap between (a) political pundits and opinion formers who want to make a great deal out of his alleged