From Context to Content: Retrieving the Social in Group-Analytic Practice

Abstract

S.H. Foulkes acknowledged the relevance of the `social' in the group-analytic process by introducing the idea of a `social unconscious' supplementing the Freudian unconscious. The present article focuses on access to unconscious `social facts' (such as class, for instance) in group-analytic practice. In order to do so, Foulkes's reformulation of the ego-psychological principle of analysing from surface to depth' is reconstructed and reconsidered clinically in the context of his own group work at the Northfield Military Hospital. Additionally, his concept of `resonance' is examined in detail from a group-analytic and systemic vertex, and then highlighted by a vignette from the inpatient treatment of a patient suffering from addiction. Finally, some further thoughts about a group-analytic theory of interpretation ar-e presented.