An Integrative Approach to Individual and Group Psychology

Were it not for the reluctance of the great majority of psychoanalytic investigators to follow the path of inquiry indicated by Freud in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (13), psychoanalysis would today be better prepared to render assistance to those responsible social scientists actively concerned with shaping a democratically-oriented postwar world. A review of the literature covering the last few years suggests several lines of inquiry that might fruitfully extend the work begun by Freud and continued by others (6, 9, 12, 21, 23, 26, 27). One step toward this goal may be taken by attempting to clarify some aspects of these points: (1) the influence of cultural institutions on human behavior, (2) the variability of affective social attitudes in different cultures, and (3) conscious and unconscious factors determining individual ego adjustment and group behavior in specific social situations.

It is customary to think in terms of society and the individual. By society is usually meant both the cultural institutions and those human organizations—political, economic, military, religious and cultural—that support them. Yet there is a fundamental difference between human (social) behavior and the framework of civilization (culture) in which it operates. The implications inherent in establishing this distinction were well recognized by Freud when he said,

“We must not forget that the mass of mankind, subjected though they are to economic necessities, are borne on by a process of cultural development—some call it civilization—which is no doubt influenced by all the other factors, but is equally certainly independent of them in its origin; it is comparable to an organic process and is quite capable of itself having an effect upon the other factors. It displaces the aims of the instincts and causes man to rebel against what has hitherto been tolerable….” (14)1

In other words, culture traits already establi