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Bledin makes the point that antisemitism had been around long before the discourse that allowed, or created, the Holocaust and even before the colonizations that created the Boers’ racist discourse. This point is his major difference with our thoughts.

This is a fascinating book. As a Manchester-based group analyst, I was not familiar with the Portuguese School of Group Analysis. From this point of view, reading this book was like hearing from a ...

The Merchant of Venice contains some of the most powerful depictions of Jewish–Christian relations in an era when Christian antisemitism dominated European life. It is one of the most difficult plays for Jews to watch: not only for Shylock’s torment at the treatment he is subjected to, particularly in the Christian characters’ relentless contempt for him, but for the depiction of his gradual descent into violent revenge, as a result of which he himself is crushed.The revenge part of Shylock’s speech is crucial. The anti-Semites in the play unconsciously fear their victim, especially after treating Shylock with cruelty and contempt. The racists then project hatred, consequently fearing that Shylock will hate them, that he will be filled with rage and seek a revenge even more cruel than that which has been perpetrated upon him. Shylock speaks the racist’s fear and then wants to carry it out. In Shakespeare’s play, Shylock becomes a justification for hatred. If we look at this as the unconscious of antisemitism, then Shakespeare is personifying this unconscious in the character of Shylock. Seen in this way, The Merchant of Venice is a dramatic depiction of the violent effects of antisemitism on the subjectivity and identity of both victims and perpetrators.We know that racism creates trauma. Sue Lieberman’s work on transmitted trauma (Lieberman, 2015) and Earl Hopper’s work on massification and aggregation both explored unprocessed trauma (Hopper, 2003). However, the permeating trauma of both racism and antisemitism has festered without being addressed adequately. Our purpose in this article is to begin to look at this disturbing truth. We will address the historical relationship between antisemitism and racism. We will make links to the development of psychoanalysis and group analysis. That Foulkes, himself was a victim of racism has always been present but largely unspoken. Unspoken, it has created blind spots, including our own racism.

Jaak Panksepp, like Foulkes, broke from the dominant paradigm in his field to fashion a series of experiments. In the process, Panksepp discovered that the midbrain is the seat of seven basic emotions. Moreover, these basic emotions are shared with all mammals. He called this discovery ‘affective neuroscience’. Panksepp’s work, taken seriously, is transforming ideas, previously expressed in the area of philosophical thinking, into a new kind of social psychology. Group analysis is a vital element in this transformation. Among other things, Panksepp shows us that humans are not unitary. The most that we can hope for is a comparatively peaceful integration of the various processes that make up our selves and our small and large groups. The external and internal role of the group conductor is helpful, philosophically, clinically and politically, to promote this integration.

The social unconscious is an abstract concept which describes a real force, like the concept of gravity. The social unconscious can only be seen by its effects. However, it is also the force that holds everything together from individual internal coherence to the largest social phenomena. It is proposed here that the new knowledge from neuroscience helps us understand the implications of having an unconscious that is also social, although its appearance is individual. Furthermore, although the brain’s appearance is structural and balanced, it has been found that brain processes actually operate in dynamic equilibrium, where tiny adjustments provide precarious balance and change is constant.

Resistance, rebellion and refusal in groups: The three R's, by Richard M Billow, New International Library of group analysis, Karnac, 2010, 296 pp., £22.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-1855757745, £45 (ha...

Groups have been shown to be effective therapeutic tools in the hands of skilled group conductors. Clients often observe that they feel better somehow, but that they do not know how this has happened. The author proposes that group analytic groups heal because they evoke the `Human Group', the species-specific group which evolved together with other facets of human biology, and which formed the hunter—gatherer tribes up to the spread of agriculture 10,000 years ago. The author states that, besides the theoretical and philosophical notions of the group, and of the social unconscious, there are also historical and pre-historical notions. Some of these notions can be found in primatology, palaeontology, archaeology, anthropology, and sociology, when writings in these disciplines are viewed with a focus on the group.

How do psychotherapy students experience learning in groups? To answer this question, the Manchester Course in Group Psychotherapy asked its students to evaluate and describe their experiences over a period of six years. The results show that learning in psychotherapy is both painful and rewarding. Much change can be made in 30 weeks of a group experiential learning situation. But, most importantly, an analytic group is an excellent setting for learning about psychotherapy.

Counsellors, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and group analysts live with an uncomfortable knowledge of human emotional and social life that does not appear to have penetrated the dominant ideologies. This became blatantly apparent in the period leading to the War on Iraq. Therapists also sensed that it was difficult for people to talk about powerful feelings elicited by the impending war. In response to this, Psychodynamic Practice and The Institute of Group Analysis organized a Forum on War and Terror. The forum included a talk from Hanna Segal and a large group. This is a report of the large group and one understanding of the group as a moment of cultural experience and change; an attempt to experience multilateralism, or dialogue, as an alternative to war.

In 1934, James Strachey wrote that the active ingredient of psychoanalysis was the mutative interpretation. Even at this early date, Strachey observed that a relatively small proportion of the analytic literature was concerned with the mechanisms for change implicit in the analytic model. In this paper, the author proposes two modifications of Strachey's ideas. One is that it is a moment, an event, and not an interpretation as such that creates change. The author terms this the ‘mutative moment’. The other modification is the proposal of an unconscious internal group matrix as an image of the structure of self. This is a self that is at one and the same time, internal and external, individual and social. Building upon Freud, the object relations theorists, Kohut and the work of group analysts, the author pinpoints where and how change occurs in both individuals and in groups. The active ingredient of change is the focus on the here-and-now, a perspective common to both therapists and counsellors. As an un...

The film Groundhog Day first came out in 1993. Five years later, it is still cited in a variety of contexts. The author proposes that this is because the film is a cultural artefact which both elucidates and frustrates the ideal of romantic love in the couple as the agent of internal change. The author also proposes a re-viewing of the meaning of the concept of couple. The convergence of object relations theories with group analysis suggests that the mind works by repeating and externalizing internal group structures in social relationships. The couple, then, becomes an intermediary structure between the individual and the group where intimacy facilitates a re-working of group internal structures. It is the collapsing and the opening of the ‘space between’ which is the agent of change. This process creates strength, power and a feeling of wholeness. But it also implies the expression of anger, pain and disappointment. The author illustrates these points with an interpretation of the Groundhog Day...

Bringing a new member into a slow-open analytic group is not always as easy as it sounds. In this paper, I propose that this is because the new member stranger evokes a complex set of meanings in both group and conductor which touch the group on all levels. This set of meanings promotes the painful process of taking back projections and consequent therapeutic opportunities and difficulties.