The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies

Volume 3: The Foundation Matrix Extended and Re-configured

Earl Hopper, Haim Weinberg, Earl Hopper, Haim Weinberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367328832
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429922251
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In this book, the authors develop the theory of the tripartite matrix, consider music as a form of non-verbal communication as a sub-dimension of the matrix, and present empirical studies of the matrices of peoples in three societies in the Middle East. It aids in the project of group analysis.

Introduction

Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg

In The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups and Societies: Volume 3: The Foundation Matrix Extended and Re-Configured we try to develop the theory of the tripartite matrix, consider music as a form of non-verbal communication as a sub-dimension of the matrix, and to present empirical studies of the matrices of peoples in three societies in the Middle East. The first volume of this series addressed the group analytic theory of the social unconscious, attempting to clarify the definition of the concept itself, indicating some of its main elements, and comparing it to the Jungian collective unconscious, the Morenoian co-unconscious, and to the study of the link and the bond by Pichon-Rivière (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011). The second volume considered the sociocultural transmission of myths, and presented several empirical studies of the foundation matrices of contemporary societies, emphasising the importance of social trauma and the continuing consequences of them (Hopper & Weinberg, 2016). We hope that the study of these three volumes will provide an appreciation of the depth and breadth of this field of inquiry, which is at the very heart of the project of group analysis.

In this Introduction to Volume 3 we share our own thinking and continuing—if not continuous—discussion about particular aspects of the social unconscious in theory, empirical research, and in clinical work. We will also try to provide bridges to the chapters by an international collection of colleagues whose professional “formation” draws on several intellectual traditions and core and clinical trainings. This “collection” has become a team which includes the authors of the chapters in the preceding two volumes. We are especially pleased to acknowledge the important contributions to this Introduction by our colleagues Dieter Nitzgen (2008), Tom Ormay (2012), and Juan Tubert-Oklander (2013, 2014).

Why the matrix?

One of the most significant contributions of S. H. Foulkes to the theory of group analysis was his concept of the matrix. This was his way of considering group-specific factors and avoiding various problems arising from the application of unmodified theories of classical psychoanalysis to the study of groups and to the development of group therapy, which usually involved the analysis of each individual in the group or taking the group as a whole as if it were an individual patient. The matrix was also the basis for his emphasis on the sociality of human nature.

Foulkes approached the group situation with the same attitude of curiosity and openness that Freud adopted when dealing with his patients. The therapeutic aim was subordinate to the analytic investigation of what occurs in the clinical situation. Striving zealously to attain a therapeutic goal was unadvisable. The best way to treat the people was to help them understand what it means to work together in a group and to develop new ways of being with, and relating to, other human beings, in a climate of non-judgemental truthfulness, compassion, mutual trust, and co-operation. In part this approach was the basis for distinguishing group analysis from group psychotherapy more generally, which carries many of the same issues and questions that characterise the continuing discussions of the similarities and differences between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

The intellectual perspective that underlies group analysis is a polemic against the tendency in Western societies for people to think in terms of the materialistic metaphysics that underlies the Newtonian model of the universe as a vast space in which there are only pieces of matter which have shape, volume, and mass, but which are inherently inert. Shapeless, volume-less, and mass-less energy acts on these “particles” through inherently dynamic “forces” that set them in motion, through which they accelerate, decelerate, deform, and/or deconstruct. Although such particles are “real”, these forces are not necessarily so. The only way to know reality is through the sense organs guided by rational thinking in the context of a particular culture, which constitutes a kind of paradigm with many unconscious aspects. This view of the universe is closely related to the Cartesian belief that an individual is an autonomous and self-contained subject who is identified with the human organism and perhaps with its brain in particular. Starting from such assumptions, it is inevitable that a group should be understood as “nothing but” an imaginary construction of its members who regard the perceptions of their interactions to be a supra-individual entity, but which is merely a product of their own perceptions (a point of view which was sometimes entertained by Bion himself).

If we start from a different ontology, one which includes not only material events, but also relations, values and norms, semiotic systems, verbal and non-verbal communications, styles, and thinking and feeling, etc. as real entities—in the sense that they are “capable of producing real effects”, then quite another picture emerges. The group is not merely an illusion or just a name for the interactions among the individual members of it, but a reality in itself, albeit not a material reality. In this context, group processes can be seen as personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal processes, thus severing the alleged identity between mind and brain. Actually, this idea is completely captured by Durkheim in his theory of a “social fact”. It is also captured later by Lewin in his application of field theory to human affairs, which was a way of acknowledging the influence of quantum mechanics with respect to the importance of waves as opposed to particles.

This hyper-complex reality cannot be conceived, perceived, or considered from a single vantage point. In order to get some idea of the whole, multiple points of view and multiple frames of references are required. Such cognition is necessarily constructive and collective, and ruled by the gestalt principle of the figure-ground distinction: if the individual member is taken as the figure, the group becomes ground, frame, and context for the perception of it; but if the group becomes the figure, the individual members of it become its ground. Of course, Bion discussed this in terms of binocular vision. Viewing, knowing, enquiring, and thinking about the human person is an active process of constructing images, thoughts, and entities, a process that necessarily includes the observer as a part of the field of inquiry.

History of the concept of matrix

The idea of condensing many mathematical relationships of similar structure into an orderly table can be traced to Chinese philosophers around the time of the birth of Jesus. Relationship and condensation are two important elements of any matrix. We know that in 1683 these ideas were outlined by Saki, the Japanese mathematician, and in 1693 were reformulated by Leibnitz, one of the outstanding proponents of the “new” philosophy in seventeenth-century Europe. There can be little doubt that the concept of matrix arrived in Europe via the Silk Route, but the influence of the Crusades cannot be entirely ignored.

In 1873 the word “matrix” was used to refer to the organisation of relationships. In 1904, James Joseph Sylvester (1973) used the Latin word “matrix”, meaning “womb”, derived from “mater” or “mother” in order to conceptualise a matrix as a condenser which contains smaller or sub-matrices. Thus, he foresaw modern systems theory in which a system contains smaller subsystems and is itself a subsystem of an even larger system. He regarded a matrix as the organisation of systems, and explained that the matrix was like a womb from which many interconnected systems of relationships were born.

Burrow (1926), writing about the social and phylogenetic foundations of our consciousness, referred to the matrix as a vehicle of our cohesion (Pertegato & Pertegato, 2013). However, his increasing emphasis on biology, at the expense of the sociocultural and political dimensions of the foundation matrix, differentiates his work from that of Foulkes. This is reminiscent of the use of the “social unconscious” by Fromm as a biological notion based on an homology of human societies with human organisms, which was then developed by Foulkes in reference to sociocultural arrangements of which people were unaware.

Foulkes (1975) argued that the matrix is in part societal and cultural, and in part biological and instinctual, the former inherited through sociocultural transmission, and the latter through transgenerational reproduction. The structure of the species is reflected in our society and culture, and to a lesser degree and in a different way, vice versa. However, Foulkes’s most succinct definition of the matrix is as follows:

The Matrix is the hypothetical web of communication and relationship in a given group [to which was added elsewhere the dimension of “values and norms”]. It is the common shared ground which ultimately determines the meaning and significance of all events and upon which all communications and interpretations, verbal and non-verbal, rest. (1964, p. 292)

In other words, the matrix becomes the context for the meaning or meanings of group events, including communicational events. It is also a construct that permits the location of causal explanations of such events. As we have outlined in our previous volumes, many colleagues have contributed to the development of the conceptual theory of the matrix and its clinical applications in both small and larger groups.

The mind in group analysis

Foulkes intended to develop a process theory of mind and to break the old association between mind and the individual organism, especially its brain (1973):

It seems difficult for many at the present time to accept the idea that what is called “the mind” consists of interacting processes between a number of closely linked persons, commonly called a group. ... These interactional processes play in a unified mental field of which the individuals composing it are a part. ... This network is a psychic system as a whole network, and not a superposed social interaction system in which individual minds interact with each other. This is the value of thinking in terms of a concept which does not confine mind, by definition, to an individual. ... This enabled me to say that it is mental processes, not persons, that interact. (pp. 224–228, italics added)

We (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011) have conveyed our own disagreement about the value of the concept of a group mind. Basically, for Hopper, the introduction of “matrix” was intended to avoid the organismic and “personistic” connotations of the term “mind”—namely, the assumption of an organised and unitary entity, with a conscious identity, purpose, and intention. He was reluctant to fall back on the concept of the Cartesian subject applied to a Cartesian group. Furthermore, he wished to disassociate himself from those theorists who applied the concept of mind to a social system based on a conservative ideology, which emphasised the integrity and stability—if not the permanence—of the system, based on homeostatic mechanisms, fostering the maintenance of the status quo, and regarding social change as an indication of instability—if not social pathology.

These are of course valid points. However, it has been argued that after Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, and Durkheim, no one can seriously maintain that the Cartesian conception of a unitary, autonomous, and pristine subject is valid, especially when applied to social systems. There can be no doubt that human groupings harbour and consolidate around different interests, feelings, and points of view that must necessarily be negotiated. Individuals must be regarded as “multividuals”, possessed of inner societies comprised of living parts who also have to negotiate their agreements and disagreements. Nonetheless, while accepting these reservations, it must also be acknowledged that many colleagues continue to hold the Cartesian conception of individuals in groups.

Another objection to the concept of group mind was based on the fact that in English and in the English philosophical and scientific tradition, mind is conceived as a functional entity, something like an inner organ and intimately related to the brain, of which it is supposed to be an epiphenomenon. In German, however, the corresponding terms are Seele (soul) and Geist (spirit), which carry very different connotations. Neither Freud nor Foulkes, whose native language and culture were German, had much difficulty in conceiving the group as a Massenpsyche, as Foulkes shows in the following quotation:

Looked at in this way it becomes easier to understand our claim that the group associates, responds and reacts as a whole. The group as it were avails itself now of one speaker, now of another, but it is always the transpersonal network which is sensitized and gives utterance, or responds. In this sense we can postulate the existence of a group “mind” in the same ways as we postulate the existence of an individual “mind”. (1957, p. 118, italics added)

Nonetheless, that the word “mind” is in quotation marks shows that Foulkes was as ambi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• EPILOGUE
• INDEX