The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies

Earl Hopper, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, group analyst, certified group therapist, and organisational consultant in private practice in London. A Distinguished Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, an Honorary Member of the Group Analytic Society International, and an Honorary Member of the Institute of Group Analysis, he is a supervisor and training analyst for many psychotherapy organizations in England. He is alos a former President of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes (IAGP), and a former Chairman of the Association of Independent Psychoanalysts of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Haim Weinberg is a Californian and Israeli licensed psychologist and group analyst. He is Past-president of the Northern California Group Psychotherapy Society and the Israeli Association of Group Psychotherapy. He is the director of an international doctorate program in psychology with an emphasis on group psychotherapy at the Professional School of Psychology, Sacramento, California, where he serves as the academic Vice President.

Introduction -- Theory -- The concepts of the social unconscious and of the matrix in the work of S. H. Foulkes -- The fluid and the solid—or the dynamic and the static: some further thoughts about the conceptualisation of foundation matrices, processes of the social unconscious, and/or large group identities -- The national habitus: steps towards reintegrating sociology and group analysis -- The inner organisation of the matrix -- Non-Verbal Communication -- The unbearable appeal of totalitarianism and the collective self: an inquiry into the social nature of non-verbal communication -- The musical foundation matrix: communicative musicality as a mechanism for the transmission and elaboration of co-created unconscious social processes -- Empirical Studies of the Social Unconscious and the Dynamic and Foundation Matrices of Middle Eastern Peoples and Societies -- The social unconscious of Israeli Jews: described and analysed by an Israeli living in North America -- “Black holes” as a collective defence against shared fears of annihilation in a small therapy group and in its contextual society -- The social unconscious of the Palestinian people -- “After the last sky”:* Palestine, Palestinians, social memory -- The social unconscious of the Egyptian people: an application of some of the ideas of Bion and Klein -- Fundamental terror of ISIS: the story of a reversed family -- Epilogue