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Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg, , London, New International Library of Group Analysis, Karnac Publishing, 2011, 344 pp. (paperback and eBook)
In the foreword to the book, Hopper reminds us that the main differentiator between group analysis and psychoanalysis is that psychoanalysis concerns the mind of the individual, whilst group analysis is concerned with the individual in relation to his social context. As such, group analytic work involves consideration of aspects of our socialized life in the form of class, language, race, ethnicity, culture, social systems and organization processes. Although the social unconscious has been a concept originally coined by Hopper and subsequently referred to within group analysis, here Hopper and Weinberg revisit the phenomenon in a series of papers written by a number of group therapists from around the world, most of whom have trainings that include group analysis.
The papers aim to provide a theoretical exploration of the social unconscious from beyond that which was originally provided by Hopper. The editors invited a number of different authors to provide chapters, and 3 years later the works have been organized in three volumes of which this is Volume I, ‘Mainly Theory’. Volume II is ‘Mainly Matrices’ and Volume III is ‘Mainly Clinical Work’.
Volume I, ‘Mainly Theory’, consists of six parts, each relating to a particular aspect of the social unconscious. Following the introduction, Part I, ‘The Origins of the Concept of the Social Unconscious’, provides an outline of early writings in group psychotherapy by its forerunners and founders and how an understanding of a social unconscious evolved.
Part II is rather interestingly titled ‘The Organismic and Neurobiological Perspective’. The inclusion of a section relating the psychological theory to neurobiology was in my opinion a great asset to this book, even if this, as with the other sections, was brief and only consisting of two chapters. Part III is ‘The Relational and Interper