Epistemology, Power, Discourse, Truth and Groups

Abstract

This article begins with reference to a recent publication that has challenged some of the previously asserted origins and attributions of group analysis and psychoanalysis. Trigant Burrow was one of the earliest psychoanalysts and coined the term ‘group analysis’ in a certain context early in the 20th-century. The book edited by the Petegatos in Italy is then used as the basis of a study examining the nature of epistemology and its being intimately and necessarily associated with power: a politics of truth. What follows then is an exploration of the work of philosophers, in particular Foucault, and others, venturing across the realms of sociology, history, politics and psychoanalysis and the nature of discourse. It is demonstrated that the claims for truth in any sphere of human life need to be subject to healthy doubt and that the perversion of truth in groups is an ever present risk which we must all take responsibility to challenge.