Large Group: A Brief Historical and Personal Account

ABSTRACT

Large Group (LG) developed in a postwar period searching for answers about the effects of group membership on the individual. If individuals perpetrating evil in World War II were “banal,” a group effect was suspected of eliciting their extreme brutality. Following Bion’s ideas, group psychoanalysis explored this using free association in a public setting. Later generations systematized his ideas out of context. They sought to professionalize and extend his and other psychoanalytic group theories yet they still worried that the group effect was regressive. After the Cold War, faith in democracy increased and likewise optimism about the effect of group on the individual. Sociotherapy and therapeutic community could furnish the social context missing in individual psychotherapy. LG could also examine relationships between inside and outside – individual mind and social structure. More recently, however, concern about negative group effects has returned. LG theorists have drawn from relational psychoanalysis, a model based on the intimacy of the individual session. However, personal encounter with “the other” is ideal in a small group setting where members feel they belong. What LG offers is understanding the experience of being in a crowd. Meanwhile, LG is popular at group therapy conferences, but we do not know what draws attendees. If leaders and members harbor different aspirations, they may not work constructively together. It would be helpful to understand what participants seek and how setting and format interact. This article begins with a naïve account of exposure to a crowd and then LG.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the thoughtful comments of the following readers while this article was in preparation: Dr. Scott Rutan, Dr. Richard Billow, and Dr. Amy Schaffer. I am also grateful to the editor, Dr. Jill Paquin, for her helpful advice. The flaws, however, are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.