The Democratic Origins of the Term `Group Analysis': Karl Mannheim's `Third Way' for Psychoanalysis and Social Science

Abstract

It is well known that Foulkes acknowledged Karl Mannheim as the first to use the term `group analysis'. However, Mannheim's work is otherwise not well known. This article examines the foundations of Mannheim's sociological interest in groups using the Frankfurt School (1929-1933) as a start point through to the brief correspondence of 1945 between Mannheim and Foulkes (previously unpublished). It is argued that there is close conjunction between Mannheim's and Foulkes's revision of clinical psychoanalysis along sociological lines. Current renderings of the Frankfurt School tradition pay almost exclusive attention to the American connection (Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer) overlooking the contribution of the English connection through the work of Mannheim and Foulkes.