Group Identity and Individuality in Times of Crisis: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Social Psychological Knowledge

Human Relations · 1997 · Volume 50 · Issue 2

Abstract

This paper locates contemporary social psychological conceptions of group identity in the context of crises in forms of knowledge, and in the ways researchers have responded to crises in disciplinary identity. Forms of group social psychology that emerged within the European tradition of research promised a fully social account of human activity and experience, but recent trends of research in the discipline, even within group identity frameworks, have returned to the individual as a focus of study. The work of Bion is used to draw attention to the ways in which crises in group identity often provoke particular varieties of response which serve to defend the group, varieties of response which look to the individual as an escape from the threat or as a solution to the problem.

Keywords

social psychology, group research, individuality, Bion

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