(Foundation-)Matrix Reloaded—Some Remarks on a Useful Concept and Its Pitfalls

Introduction

Dear colleagues and friends, welcome everybody. It feels good to see so many familiar faces and also new ones, who give me a feeling of perhaps telling something new.

It is an honour and it is a burden to be the first speaker. The opening session always is special—people often have not fully arrived, physically or at least mentally. The first article should tune you in and warm you up. In fact I have to admit that this time it was extremely difficult for me to prepare my article—and after a while I started to wonder why. The topic is familiar to me (Scholz, 2003), I see many befriended faces in the public—so, where is the problem—and perhaps the resistance?

And I found it. What I found was a deep sadness. I realized more, and deeper than ever before, that the intellectual matrix, the communicational network of the time, when Foulkes had his analysis in Vienna, in the 1920s, when psychoanalysis was young and started to be successful—that this matrix cannot be reloaded. That time, when Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, Budapest, Prague, Breslau, Königsberg, Heidelberg, Freiburg were the nodal points of a flourishing exchange of a brilliant young generation of mostly Jewish intellectuals, who, in these times of radical change after the First World War, wanted to make their contribution to rebuild the world.

This time is definitely lost, this matrix is disrupted, destroyed, broken. The people who constituted it were expelled, were deported and murdered; to name just two: Karl Landauer was killed in a Nazi death camp, and Sabina Spielrein in the Soviet Union by a German SS death squad. Those who survived went mostly to the USA, and some to the UK. Very few came back. As far as possible, the men and women rebuilt their careers in the new countries, some of them—amongst them S.H. Foulkes—rather successfully. Nevertheless the context was and is irreversibly broken, broken by my German fellow countrymen and women.

In a way this workshop can be seen as a necessarily imperfect trial to reconnect to this bygone world, whose intellectual standards remain a challenge. The title of this symposium Group Analysis Today—Developments in Intersubjectivity imposes on the whole event the task to work out the relevance of the intersubjective turn of psychoanalysis for group analytic thinking. It means going beyond the understandable pride, that Foulksian group analysis always had an intersubjective and moreover transpersonal approach, though on a much narrower empirical basis than nowadays, because the research on early attachment and infant development were not yet known, i.e. did not exist at that time.

It is up to me today to revisit the perhaps most genuine Foulksian concept, the concept of the matrix, which is called by Liesl Hearst and Harold Behr the central governing metaphor of group analysis’ (Behr and Hearst, 2005: 119).

If you ever went to a class reunion and immediately felt the same emotions, affections, the same dislikes towards people you had not seen or even thought about for years yet found yourself in the same position as decades ago—then you will have a sensual impression about where this theoretical framework is going.

You all know the famous definition of the matrix as

the hypothetical web of communication and relationship in a given group. It is the common shared ground which ultimately determines the meaning and significance of all events and upon which all communications and interpretations, verbal and nonverbal rest. (Foulkes, 1964: 292)

What Foulkes offers us here is a concept of mind that is located between the group members—as he writes in his posthumously published article Mind (2003) ‘that all that which is mental is a matter of more than one individual person and brain from the beginning’ (Foulkes, 2003: 320). This resonates very well with the findings in attachment research, where in the attunement between infant and caregiver no sender/receiver can be determined (Fonagy 2001; Stern 1985). The most important things happen between the individuals. The psychic development of the infant—intertwined with bodily maturation—can be understood as a co-creation of the persons involved. Involved in this apparently intimate situation are some thousands of people who have worked out the symbolic system of language and gestures that are part of the emotional field in which mother and infant meet and communicate.

These verbal and nonverbal codes lead us to that dimension of the matrix, that Foulkes in a later elaboration called the ‘foundation matrix’ i.e. the ‘stock’ of shared meanings, that people bring into a communicational situation. The material in which they create their actual process is the ‘dynamic matrix’. The quotation that summarizes it best, says,

Instead, I have accepted from the beginning that even a group of total strangers, being of the same species and more narrowly of the same culture, share a fundamental mental matrix (foundation matrix). To this their closer acquaintance and their intimate exchanges add consistently so that they also form a current, ever moving ever developing dynamic matrix. (Foulkes, 1990: 228)

The best known elements constituting this foundation matrix is language, but it also includes all kinds of bodily cues that indicate, e.g. culture, social class etc.

In my understanding the concept of foundation matrix considers individuals and groups as one single and inseparable process in which biological, social, cultural and economic factors meet and move in ongoing communication (Scholz, 2011: 265). Thus the foundation matrix carries a time dimension, in which biology may be the slowest moving level—but it is moving, e.g. people become taller, live longer, sexual maturation starts earlier etc. Communication, as I understand it here, includes the non-verbal level, facial expressions as well as gestures, postures and mimetically transferred meanings. And because these expressions are forms that precede the individual and have to be adopted, i.e. incorporated by them, we can, as a result, speak of a socially shaped body carrying meaning and thus being a communicative agent. For example, a man who once served in the military can be recognized by his gestures and postures as being an ex-soldier even when meeting him in civilian clothes.

In this concept Foulkes parallels the matrix as a social, communicative web with the neuronal web as studied by his teacher Kurt Goldstein and thus it contains in nucleus an anti-Cartesian approach (Mies, 2012), that deserves further elaboration to arrive at a real group analytic understanding of individuals. Foulkes in his elaboration of a foundation matrix tries to enlarge his understanding beyond the actual face to face groups to the broader scope of culture and society thus reaching out for broader dimensions and respectively different angles. Recently this concept has found greater attention. The question is, why? Let me try an answer.

Some Background Aspects of the Recent Interest in Transpersonal Concepts

Our times are characterized by an accelerated international integration of social and economic systems called globalization, which is fuelled by modern telecommunication and transportation devices, as well as accompanied by large scale voluntarily and involuntary migration processes so that ample opportunities and necessities for international contacts are provided. It is a fascinating time of big upheavals, characterized by breathtaking new opportunities yet at the same time full of threats and violence—a fragile, unstable and therefore frightening situation (Khanna, 2008).

Against this background the idea of the foundation matrix—that was not really recognized for a long time—has recently found some attention and popularity — along with related concepts like ‘the social unconscious’ (Hopper, 2001; Weinberg, 2006; Hopper and Weinberg, 2011) and/or ‘large group identity’, a term connected to the work of Vamik Volkan. It was Earl Hopper, who in 2001 simply stated, ‘We need a concept like the “social unconscious” in order to discuss social, cultural and communicational restraints’ (Hopper, 2001: 11).

Vamik Volkan’s focus lies in the traumas that are inherent in the globalization process, because the shifts in the international and national balance of power happen any way but peacefully, often even violently. He claims that ‘large group psychology, in its own right, includes the necessity to find enemies and allies . . . and this necessity is often accompanied by excessive destructive acts (Volkan, 2006:17)’.

All these different theoretical attempts (that sometimes even seem to be used synonymously) try to come to terms with the fact that it becomes more than obvious that individuals, their feelings, behaviours, aspirations, attitudes towards life, cannot be understood by considering just these individuals, even if one includes the family of origin as is done in classical psychoanalytic thinking, because the social comes in through the parents, through the super-ego of the parents. The family system itself does not exist outside of time and space but is an integral part of the larger cultural foundation matrix (Le Roy, 1994). Its inclusion is not sufficient. We have to look out for these larger units and wider contexts. And something else becomes obvious and needs further consideration: If we look to these larger units we find that what connects or divides people is to a large degree unconscious. The notion of the unconscious is what all three concepts—foundation matrix, social unconscious and large group identity—have in common.

After roughly describing the needs to which theses concepts respond, a closer investigation about their respective benefits, their overlap and differences could be worthwhile—and that is what I am going to try now.

Foundation matrix

One might imagine the foundation matrix as a three-dimensional structure, unfolding its current shape between people in the two dimensions of space with its long roots back in time. It can best be visualized as a mainly ‘subterraneous’ multistranded network or perhaps better rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 1977) that encompasses the whole of mankind. It is a living system, whose threads or veins/tubes are made of different materials (media), having different colours (qualities) and thickness (intensities), built up through communication and fuelled by emotions based on needs and desires. You find not only ‘knots’ (individuals), but you also find on this map areas of higher density, i.e. more communicational exchange between individuals, and areas of lower density as some are only connected in a very loose manner. These areas of higher density or same colours might be considered as different types of groups, face to face groups, families, tribes, organizations, institutions, nations, religions and cultures.

The foundation matrix as a living system is a pattern that generates patterns, some with a shorter life span, some existing longer, but all in permanent flux. Individuals die, group members withdraw or are excluded, groups of every size and quality gain and lose members, tribes disappear and/or come to form nations, empires rise and decline, cultures emerge, have their climax and their transformations, and sometimes they cease to exist, their members becoming part of other groups—but despite these changes, there will always be a foundation matrix as long as mankind exists. Understanding cultures as some slow moving aggregations in the foundation matrix, means to see them as possibly indefinite, open processes and not as given unchangeable and impermeable entities, marking ‘the fundamental other’. It is a concept that can easily integrate large scale changes at different speeds. But the larger a group and the slower the alterations the more likely the process character and thus its time dependency is ‘forgotten’. We find relatively stable entities, which then are treated as if they were objects and eternal.

The three concepts mentioned—foundation matrix, social unconscious, large group identity—also could be read as a continuum from the fluid to the solid. The foundation matrix clearly emphasizes the plurality of actors and characterizes the important awareness of process while the other concepts gradually get more homogeneous and tighter.

Social Unconscious

In my understanding what is called the ‘social unconscious’ could be integrated into the notion of foundation matrix. Therefore we would name those aspects ‘the social unconscious’ that are actively and definitely excluded from communication and thus from becoming conscious. However, I usually avoid this term, because in a way it repeats the old juxtaposition of individual and group/society that Foulkes tried to overcome (Scholz, 2011: 282). It has to be said however that this opinion is not widely shared. Just to mention one version of a more common understanding, I quote an early definition by Haim Weinberg:

The social unconscious is the co-constructed shared unconscious of members of a certain social system as community, society, nation or culture. It includes shared anxieties, fantasies, defences, myths, and memories. Its building bricks are made of chosen traumas and chosen glories . . . (Weinberg, 2006: 99)

He later differentiates it from the super ego, from the social in the unconscious, the collective unconscious and hidden social norms (2006: 99). Here Weinberg clearly postulates a special psychic layer as ‘the social unconscious’ for all members of a given group, which implies that he also postulates ‘a-social’ psychic structures.

In fact Foulkes contributed himself to the differing positions in the group analytic community by using the term ‘social unconscious’ a few times and then in a more descriptive way. But what is more important, beyond the one or the other quotation, is the fact that group analysis has no theory of group boundaries, and how a given group and being a member of a specific group as a ‘we’ is represented both consciously and unconsciously in the minds of its members.

One might say that the more stable elements of the foundation matrix perhaps find their theoretical reflection here.

Large Group Identity

The latter definitely holds true for the third term in this context the ‘large group identity’, a concept developed by Vamik Volkan, who says:

Large-group (ethnic, national, religious) identity is defined as the subjective experience of thousands of millions of people who are linked by a persistent sense of sameness while also sharing numerous characteristics with others in foreign groups. The main task that members of a large group share is to maintain, protect, and repair their large group identity. (Volkan, 2001: 79)

This wording clearly and deliberately echoes the famous definition of an individual’s identity by Erik H. Erikson, who brought the term identity to general attention, describing it as a sustained feeling of inner sameness with oneself (Erikson, 1946).

Volkan translates this to the area of large group psychology and connects it to what he calls the ‘core identity’. The core identity is, that part of individual identity which cannot be transformed easily (as other parts like, e.g. professional identities), and is that part which is fragmented in psychosis, whose loss means psychological death. He goes on, ‘an individual’s large group identity is intimately connected to his or her personal core identity’ (Volkan, 2004: 33).

Here group members share basically the same psychic construction that discriminates them from members of other large groups, who on their side are interconnected in a similar way. There is no significant overlap on any basic dimension—at least not as long as the large group is not in a state of regression. But if we bear in mind that Volkan connects the large group identity to the core identity / the mental health of the individuals, we can understand that his main concern is regressed societies. All his endeavours to describe the qualities of large group identity (Volkan, 1999; 2004) serve just one purpose: to contribute to the understanding of regressive processes in large groups in order to ensure /restore sound social conditions.

Though theoretically problematic, on a descriptive level large group regressions can be identified (Volkan, 2004: 60). Rather primitive psychic mechanisms prevail: Introjections, projections, splitting between us and them, mild (cleaning a language) or cruel (‘ethnic cleansing’, killing of traitors) purification acts gain ground. Originating from real or imagined collective trauma, the large group is formed and closes the boundaries. There is a clear division between ‘us’ and ‘them’. No deviation or differentiation is allowed anymore, and revenge becomes more important than solving or regulating problems.

In a different way but aiming at similar processes, Earl Hopper developed his theory of the fourth basic assumption: In cases of trauma and the accompanying annihilation fear, groups and group-like social systems lose their previous cohesion. They become incohesive either in the form of aggregates or masses, where massification processes, e.g. scapegoating, sexualization of aggression prevail or, on the other hand aggregate where encapsulation and bureaucratic processes dominate (Hopper, 2003). One of the advantages of Hopper’s thinking is that he clearly distinguishes between regressed and non-regressed social systems (Hopper 2003: 71), and theorizes the transition between both. He does not conceptualize societies as closed systems, but has a clear understanding of different types of groups instead.

Closed systems—homogeneous inside and clearly distinct from other systems / groups, denying individual differences and not allowing ambiguities or double /triple loyalties—are indications of regression. Part of this regressive move could be to close the boundaries of one’s own group and to postulate a hierarchy of, for example, nations/cultures with one’s own large group at the top. If trauma is added, the situation can be fuelled with hatred and feelings of entitlement and revenge thus (re)gaining the ‘deserved’ place. Volkan’s whole work can be understood as a constant trial to identify these destructive forces and processes in the hope of developing models and procedures to prevent the worst (Volkan, 2013).

It is in this context, and with a similar intention, that we find the recent attempts to make a fruitful use of the group analytic concept of foundation matrix by applying it to national, ethnic and/or religious entities.

Dangers of Closed Systems/Non-process Thinking

Nonetheless, to me, these attempts have a down side. The task is worthwhile, yet very complicated. When trying to do justice to the fact, that the individual and their psyche is embedded in and part of larger units, we have to be aware that the theoretical territory that we are entering here is anything but empty. If we are not precise in our wording and thinking—if we leave the communicational ground of processes and open systems with multiple actors in favour of distinct entities with clear boundaries, we are not so far from (unwanted) proximities to new right wing thinking, in which culture replaces the notion of race and these thinkers give themselves an anti-racist posture, claiming not special rights for a special race, but the right to be different:

The recognition of difference—for the individual as well as for a people—is the recognition of what constitutes personality, identity, and is what makes the individual distinct. To deny the difference means to regard human beings as interchangeable at will. Racism is nothing but the denial of difference. (Mohler and Stein, 1993)

New right wing thinking meanwhile makes broad use of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist critics and arguments. But it nevertheless ends up with the idea of distinctly and eternally different groups and groupings, which cannot and should not be intermingled. Nowadays the relevant concept in this context is that of ‘ethnopluralism’, a term created 1973 by Henning Eichberg (Stöss, 2006). We have to be careful not to contribute unwillingly by describing distinct ‘unconsciousnesses’ for different nations, cultures etc. On the surface these concepts do not claim a supremacy of one group over the other—but the step is not far, especially when privileges can be gained or claims ‘have’ to be legitimized. We might unwittingly support the arguments of the new right. Nowadays only very few people would articulate things as roughly as Jung did, when he wrote ‘The Aryan unconscious has higher potential than the Jewish’ (Jung, 1934).

Furthermore this is not only or not even foremost a moral argument against this way of thinking. It is not about being immoral, it is about being false. These entities do not just exist, they are made. Freud himself realized that members of a group have a tendency—by means of narcissistic identification—to ignore individual differences (Freud, 1921). Moreover this ignorance has the character of some kind of purification: the good is inside the group, and the bad is outside. If we apply these ideas to nations and cultures we are in the middle of extremely dangerous processes.

Theoretically this means that we have to think more precisely. What does it mean to say that a large group is composed of millions of individuals and their interconnections? The concept of the foundation matrix is a sound base to work on this problem. The idea of separate groups as closed spheres in fact does not very well mirror the reality of a globalized world where the composition of, and sizes of groups, and the membership of nations change more quickly than ever, and so involves the necessity of transforming identities and identifications. Moreover the notion of foundation matrix is able to integrate not only these changes but also relatively new phenomena—like the fact that an estimated 220 million people live in countries not their own, many of them no longer clearly identified with a simple national/ethnic/cultural affiliation (Iyer, 2013.) Maybe it is just these tendencies that create a need to reassure oneself about one’s place in the world by retrenching to the familiar group. But that itself seems a regressive move.

Albeit there is sometimes a necessary healthy regression in the service of the ‘ego’ and also perhaps in service of the ‘we’ but in the long run we should try not to be part of the regression, but to analyse the processes involved. We should try not to be part of the problem, but of the solution. There is a future to gain (or to lose) by using the theoretical potential of group analysis. We need to understand the composition and tradition, as well as the interconnections between the more stable, as well as the more fluid elements and threats, of the moving structure called foundation matrix. The especially important questions to address are the conditions under which certain ideas come to the foreground, what goes to the background and where are the hot spots and why. These questions imply our need to further develop group analytic theory. It has to be worked out and what it means—that these constantly changing entities are composed of a multiplicity of actors, individuals that are social to the core and yet transcend their sociological priming. Group analysis needs a theory of group cohesion, group boundaries, it needs a theory of ‘we’ and a group analytic theory of the individual, of ‘I’, which is always part of ‘we’ —as I have tried to demonstrate in this article.