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The articles collected for this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry comprise a broad range of theoretical, clinical, socio-cultural, and philosophical reflections on the topic of bullying or—perhaps more broadly—psychoanalytic perspectives on the construction of power relations and their impact upon individual development and group-level functioning. The authors examine the vicissitudes of interpersonal relationships, as well as their influence upon the broader social fabric. Readers will note that many of the articles in this issue bring into the foreground the impact of a large group influences upon the construction of dyadic relationships and also highlight the embeddedness or intersubjectively constructed aspects of what has been classically thought of as a monadic mind within a more encompassing group mind. Thus, most of the articles in this article reflect, at least to some degree, an integration of a relational perspective on the mind, with its emphasis on multiple selves and the socio-cultural imbrication of psychological functioning. It is this coconstructed group- level sensibility that is often missing from accounts of bullying in newspapers, and in the commentaries of various pundits who meditate upon its sometimes tragic consequences. That is, the contributors to this issue tend to focus upon the relational interplay among roles and influences, rather than upon inflexible roles and motivations of the bully or the victim. More recently, this pairing has been expanded to include a participating audience of bystanders, who more accurately serve as much more than an audience or Greek chorus but, rather, as active coconstructors of events.
Stuart W. Twemlow and Frank C. Sacco, psychoanalysts who are justly famous for their work in community psychiatry, introduce our topic by delineating a number of “universal truths,” many of which concern the broader, more hidden processes of the group mind. Twemlow and Sacco first point out that bullying is an inevitable aspect