Abstract
This book invites us to explore ‘the social unconscious’ and to understand that it is a fundamentally redundant concept. Psychoanalytic psychotherapists, who increasingly practise from a relational or intersubjective perspective, need the concept of the social unconscious to expand the notion of an unconscious that primarily resides in the individual, to a more useful group analytic framework where the individual is ‘social through and through’.
Hopper says that when Foulkes used that phrase, he meant that the unconscious mind of a person is ‘always a socially unconscious mind in its origins, content, development and maintenance, which is not to deny the importance of the continuing representation of biological needs, drives and instincts’, and so there is no such thing as an individual without a social context and no such thing as a personal unconscious that does not include a social unconscious.
To elaborate and debate this is the pleasure and excitement of this book. It is complicated and multi-faceted but a breath of fresh air that embraces the value of thought and ideas coming from varied and overlapping sources. To review the book, I had to read it from cover to cover, and can only say it is like attending one of our large group symposiums. Just as you feel you may have grasped a particular argument, you are swept on to another framework which overlaps but diverges into different pastures. Fundamentally, this book is a reinvigoration of the theories that contribute to group analysis with the kaleidoscope focussing away from the individual unconscious and into the realm where there is no individual as such—a view much debated by Ralph Stacey but taken up in greater depth here. It is the first of a series of three, with the two that follow (Volume 2, Mainly Matrices and Volume 3, Mainly Clinical Work), applying and developing the theories debated in Volume 1.
Foulkes himself welcomed learning from other disciplines to feed his own perspectives and this is well illustrated by the very stimulating father/son debate between Hopper and Weinberg in the Introduction. They show us the wide range of disciplines, philosophies and intellectual paths that are drawn upon to help us think about the complexities of the ideas in the book—or, indeed, in our discipline as a whole. In fact, Hopper and Weinberg begin by looking at the roots of their own initial trainings—Hopper as a sociologist and Weinberg as an electrical engineer.
The book is helpfully divided into sections beginning with a revisiting of Foulkes, Pichon Riviere (who, it is fascinating to understand, was exploring similar ideas in another part of the world), and Moreno, to examine in more depth some of the ideas insufficiently explored when thinking about the individual alone with his/her unique unconscious. Part Two jumps to the present, looking at mirror neurons and Tom Ormay’s development of a new term ‘Nos’ that, to quote Pines’ introduction (p72), ‘keeps a psychoanalytical structure of a theory of mind by adding a genuine social function that develops from an inherited biological base’. The book encompasses all the different theoretical frameworks that we use, from psychoanalytic perspectives to systems theory, neuroscience to matrix, and includes the intuitive level of resonance at the end. So the book returns to Interpersonal Theory in Part Three, and in Part Four explores the implications of some of these ideas from Prague and the context of war in Serbia. Part Five debates what we mean by the Matrix of the Social System and shows us how difficult it can be to clarify what we are each talking about but at the same time, how important it is to understand that what we say may have implications that we may or may not have intended. Perhaps it is helpful, then, to enter the final section where resonance rules in The Numinous and The Unknown!
Throughout the chapters, various themes permeate the theory. I will mention a few of particular interest to me, but each reader will not only select the sections that mean the most to them but also, I imagine, follow the themes that most resonate for them. The three that I found most compelling were, firstly, Elias’ ideas and his understanding of power that he uses to debate the extent to which we, at each moment in history, co-construct our environment while being constructed by it. It is an important and visible experience in our small groups but perhaps hopeful in understanding how society develops. Ideas can be powerful.
This is connected to—but also separate from—the second area of interest to me, which is the extent to which the body also expresses a social unconscious. Elias is fascinating on this topic especially when describing the social development of shame around defecation and what part of the body could be exposed or not. What does the body and the gendered body need to be like at any moment in history? For example, is desire inspired by an ankle, does cosmetic surgery enhance breasts or lips, or should a woman suppress her appetite to become what she imagines is the perfect shape for the ideal partner? Somehow the suppressed but not unknown message is that a perfect body will lead to the magic solution of perfect happiness. The massive increase in placebo self-medication to manage our bodies with their anxieties and imperfections has become an oil-well of riches to a marketplace that needs to sell. It teaches us to see our bodies from a market perspective and increases rather than decreases anxiety. Perhaps these anxieties also redefine the nature of illness and mental illness?
Finally, it is important to remember that Hopper began his discussion about the social unconscious some years ago, together with Volkan, Dalal and others, looking at what needed to be repressed in terms of trauma. What could we bear to know and how could we deal with the unmanageable? What did we repress in the interests of particular social orders? This continues to be a powerful theme in many of the discussions as it is in our clinical practice and also reminds us of the importance of theory. There are wars throughout the world but as I write, the impossibility of grappling with the ethnic tents of Gaza and Israel, impinges. To keep dialogue alive, we need ideas that look beyond the present and beyond the past so that we can tackle the traumas, the unhealable wounds that keep these wars alive.
Theories, debates, myths and stories all take place in Winnicott’s transitional space, giving us the opportunity to reflect using both emotions and thoughts to struggle with the insoluble conundrums of life. A construct such as the ‘social unconscious’ is just such a space and, at this moment in our group analytic theoretical life, it is an important space to enter. Many of the ideas in the book will be familiar, but given more depth by being revisited in this context, and gaining perhaps more urgency at a very difficult time in history.