A Group Analytic/Social Unconscious Perspective of Psychoanalytic Training: In Search of Complexity

This response to Stavros Charalambides’ article, “The ‘Group Turn’ in Psychoanalysis: A Proposal for Including Group Work in Psychoanalytic Training,” affirms his call to integrate group processes into psychoanalytic education and expands on it from a group analytic perspective. Group analysis, originating with Foulkes during WWII, anticipated contemporary intersubjective approaches by emphasizing mutuality, multiplicity, and openness. Central to this view is the social unconscious—the shared, co-constructed unconscious shaped by historical trauma, collective memory, and cultural forces—which becomes especially visible in large group contexts. Including large groups in training allows candidates to engage directly with dynamics of authority, scapegoating, belonging, and socio-political conflict, thereby fostering complexity and dialogic capacity. While such groups must be skillfully convened to avoid harm, they offer unique opportunities to transform binary debates into genuine dialogue. At a time when polarization threatens societies and professional communities alike, incorporating group work into psychoanalytic training is not only valuable but essential for cultivating resilient, open-minded analysts able to address the social dimension of psychic life.