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Why would The Psychoanalytic Review turn its attention to the field of social psychology? Freud's (1921) “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” contains elementary thoughts about the group's influence on the individual. Social psychologists are elaborating this influence in increasingly sophisticated ways. Life is lived in the context of groups: family, school, office, soccer game, religious gathering, and so forth. Catherine A. Sanderson, Manwell Family Professor in Life Sciences at Amherst College, makes clear that merely talking with people about their histories, ideals, beliefs, and sense of personal identity has little bearing on predicting how they actually are going to act (pp. 65-68, 134-136). Instead, actions correlate with the influence of the group in ways Freud never imagined.
Psychoanalysts tend to limit their focus to childhood and psychic structure. This makes our field vulnerable to the Fundamental Attribution Error, namely, the error of assuming that what happens is driven mainly by individual personalities, not by the situations and forces acting upon them. I offer an example not mentioned by Sanderson, but one with which she is likely