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IV. Be. Organizational and Social Dynamics; Psychohistory Applied fields of Organizational and Social Dynamics, and the interdisciplinary field of Psychohistory use the above concepts in their further investigations and elaborations for the understanding of large group functioning, across time and geographies. An example from Social Dynamics is Morris Nitsun’s (1996) concept of the “ Antigroup ”, a confluence of unconscious destructive elements that threaten the functioning of the group , be it a therapy group, organizational or institutional group, or a macro-social group context. The field of Psychohistory in particular, has a long tradition in North America of having applied the psychoanalytic concepts to macro-social events across the ages. The first published articles on psychohistorical themes appeared already in the first issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology of 1909. Further extensive work in this field was pioneered by, among others, Robert J. Lifton (1993); The Journal of Psychohistory, founded by Lloyd deMause; and Clio’s Psyche, edited by Paul Elovitz. A contemporary example from psychoanalytic Psychohistory is Eva Papiasvili’s and Linda Mayers’ “Transcendental Configuration” in which the access to, and transformation of the infantile-irrational-magical provides a needed resource for overcoming traumas of epic proportions throughout the Middle Ages (2013, 2014, 2016). Nitsun (1996), as well as Papiasvili and Mayers (2013), emphasize both the limitless destructive and creative potential of the group’s irrational and regressive, yet enlivening and regenerating, unconscious contents and processes.
V. CONCLUSION
In this early 21st century, there are many ways of understanding the unconscious across the three psychoanalytic continents. Within this conceptual plurality, there exist important regional trends. In Europe , French analysts initiated the trend of “ going back to Freud ”, re-reading, de-constructing and setting the classical concepts to work. Within the French tradition, postulating an absolute (irreducible) separation between preconscious/conscious and the unconscious, and linking the unconscious with the sexual drive (different from the notion of instinct), is paramount. Within strands of this thinking, it is felt that the unconscious thus cannot be revealed by observation but only deduced in ‘après coup’ , after the event, psychic movements . Another trend of European thought on the unconscious is represented by a group of analysts aligned with cognitive science, neurobiology and neuroscience in exploring implicit procedural knowledge and implicit memory , where, it is hypothesized, all infantile experiences of the first two years of life are located. At the heart of this conceptual territory, which is about relational, implicit or enactive procedures and representations, there is a model of development
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