The insurrection that took place in the United States on January 6, 2021, raised important questions regarding the relationship between the leader and the group. When the 45th president uttered the words “So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” was he telling his followers to advance on the Capitol? Or was he simply articulating their already-existing desire? That is to ask, does the leader lead the group by suggestion? Or is there something else? Some infinitely more complicated bond or dynamic at work? 100 years earlier, in 1921, while another tyrant was consolidating his power, Sigmund Freud published Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, marking psychoanalysis’s entry into the burgeoning field of Massenpsychologie. In this text, Freud takes up this very question of the group and its relationship with the leader. Deploying psychoanalytic concepts, like identification, idealization, and the ego ideal, Freud sought to offer answers to these exact questions. Given that 100 years later, we are still living with the questions that animated Freud’s original text, it is an opportune moment to revisit the Freudian topic of group psychology.
Though Group Psychology is an event in its own right—a signal of the expansion of the purview of psychoanalysis from the clinic to the social—Freud published the text knowing that there were unresolved questions in his account. What is the exact difference between a collection of people and a group? Why do collections of people tend to form groups? Are there leaderless groups? Or groups where the leader is secondary to an abstraction or an idea? Can an unfulfilled wish lead the group? What about hatred? So, while we must revisit the issue of group psychology, it is clear that our approach cannot be straightforward. We cannot simply apply Freud’s schema to contemporary events because his schema itself is incomplete. Rather, our approach must be dialectical. That is, we must revisit group psychology while simultaneously reappraising Freud’s original theorization of it, answering unresolved questions where they appear, raising new questions where none existed before, and going beyond it where necessary. Thus, the papers that will be published in this special issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society will offer fresh accounts of group psychology, not simple regurgitations of it. Toward this end, we seek papers that endeavor to fill gaps in Freud’s original theory where they already exist, papers that open up new gaps by posing hitherto unasked questions, papers that open up new territory for group psychology by bringing Freud into close contact with other theorists and thinkers, papers that underline or highlight strange resonances within the dynamic of the group, papers that deploy the concepts of group psychology to offer innovative interpretations of aesthetic and cultural objects, and papers that bring group psychology to bear on social and political phenomena. In bringing these papers together, this special issue will demonstrate that group psychology, far from dead and embalmed, is more relevant now than ever before.
We seek papers that touch on one or more of the following topics:
• Leadership and leaders
• Collective politics and populism
• Fascism
• Mobs and masses
• Identification and idealization
• Structure and formation of the group
• Enjoyment and jouissance
• Shared grievance
• Sovereignty
• Leaderless groups
• Films and literature that interrogate groups
• Ego ideal and superego
• Leading ideals
• Membership, chosenness, otherness
• The member, the enemy, the neighbor
Authors may submit either original articles or counterspace articles. Original Articles should not exceed 8,000 words in length, including references and, where they are used, endnotes. Counterspace articles are equally rigorous as original articles but are non-traditional in their form. Counterspace articles are 3,000–5,000 words in length.
All articles must conform to the mission of PCS: “This international journal explores the intersection between psychoanalysis and the social world. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society is a journal of both clinical and academic relevance which publishes articles examining the roles that psychoanalysis can play in promoting and achieving progressive social change and social justice. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society benefits a worldwide community of psychoanalytically informed scholars in the social and political sciences, media, cultural and literary studies, as well as clinicians and practitioners who probe the relationship between the social and the psychic.”
To propose a paper, authors should submit an abstract (250-500 words) and a bio (100 words) to the special issue editors (dcho@otterbein.edu) by December 1, 2024. Authors should indicate in their proposal whether they wish to contribute an original article or a counterspace article.
Key Dates:
Abstracts are due December 1, 2024
Papers are due September 1, 2025
