Conflictual meetings between social identities in analytic group therapy

Social identities play a significant role in the development of personality and various disorders and challenges. In addition, they play an important role in the encounter between representatives of different social groups and can add to personality and interpersonal perspectives to group dynamics. Despite their significance, exploration of social identities occurs mainly in the realms of social psychology and post-colonialist theories and not so much in psychoanalysis, which favours the individual perspective over the social. Foulkes, the founder of group analysis, started a revolution in the field of psychoanalysis when he focussed on the social world and its significant influence on development. However, some of his successors argued that due to political and other reasons, Foulkes did not ‘follow through’ with his own theory and in his therapy groups he did not put sufficient emphasis on exploration of social identities and power relations. This article reviews the concept of social identities through four theoretical disciplines: social psychology, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theories and group analysis. A vignette from an analytic group that has been meeting for two years and coped with the meeting of different social identities in the complex Israeli reality will be discussed.