From Crowd Psychology to the Dynamics of Large Groups offers transdisciplinary research on the history of the study of social formations, ranging from nineteenth-century crowd psychology in France and twentieth-century Freudian mass psychology, including the developments in critical theory, to the study of the psychodynamics of contemporary large groups. The book presents a unique combination of sociology, psychoanalysis, and group analysis in the study of social formations. It revisits the epistemological basis of group analysis by introducing and discussing its historical path, especially in connection with the study of large groups and investigations of the social unconscious processes. It also explores early work on group relations and contemporary research on the basic-assumption group, particularly Hopper’s theory of Incohesion as a fourth basic assumption. The reflections in this book present new perspectives for psychologists, psychoanalysts, group analysts, group psychotherapists, sociologists, and historians to investigate unconscious processes and the psychodynamics of contemporary crowds, masses, and social systems illuminating the comprehension of the twenty-first-century collective movements.
 

Carla Penna [email protected]
Carla Penna, PhD is a psychoanalyst and a group analyst in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Group-Analytic Society International and Member of
the Analytic Group Section Committee of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group processes. She is a former president of the Brazilian Group Psychotherapy
Association and Group-Analytic Psychotherapy Society of the State of Rio de Janeiro and a former Visiting Professor of Medical Psychology at FCM/UERJ. She published articles in
academic international Journal, and published two books Inconsciente Social in Portuguese in 2014 and From Crowd Psychology to the Dynamics of Large Groups: Historical, Theoretical and
Practical Considerations in 2022 by Routledge.