The Lost Roots of the Theory of Group Analysis: ‘Taking Interrelational Individuals Seriously’!

Abstract

This paper is a micro-historical analysis of unpublished drafts of S.H. Foulkes – intended to be part of his ‘Theory Book’ on group analysis – together with a comprehensive new historical reading of Norbert Elias's published writings relevant to group analysis, focusing on two lost roots of the theory of group analysis: (1) Elias's discovery of the simultaneous-interdependent process of ‘Individualization and Socialization’, and (2) Foulkes's innovative conception of the ‘mind as a multi-personal phenomenon’. This analysis forms the main argument of this paper – that the theory of group analysis ‘takes interrelational individuals (in the plural) seriously’, not the reified concept of ‘The Individual’ nor the abstract concept of ‘The Group’. It is proposed that Foulkes's conception of the individual's mind ‘as a multi-personal phenomenon’ is compatible, albeit, preceded Mitchell's ‘relational’ conception of ‘multiple selves’.