From Crowd Psychology to the Dynamics of Large Groups

The dialectics of Chat: Privilege, power and institutional racism

“…There is then the additional question as to who claims the right to define what theory of the large group we are to abide by. Both Emma Reicher's (2020) study of the large group in this journal and Carla Penna's (2022) book covering much of the history of large group research make it clear that there are various ways of looking at the large group and not all of them are in agreement. The concept of 'epistemic violence' is also of great significance here but one of which Rohr seems entirely unaware.…”

One hundred years since Freud’s Group Psychology: Challenges for groups in the 21st-century

“…Thus, in the clash between liberal and conservative forces, the new disciplines paved the way for the birth of the study of crowd psychology, through Henry Fournial, Gabriel Tarde (1890) and Gustave Le Bon (1895) in France, and Cesare Lombroso and Scipio Siguele (1891) in Italy (Van Ginneken, 1992). From then on, studies on the public and the crowd (Tarde, 1890), ideas on collective consciousness (Durkheim, 1895), and the group mind (Le Bon, 1895) led to investigations of social formations (Penna, 2022).…”

“…Concerns with collective behaviour thus turned into a need to find ways to control and govern the masses (Moscovici, 1985). From this perspective, it seemed that the solution for mass rebellion depended mainly on the knowledge of its psychology and 20th-century socio-political movements and leadership concerns pinned all their hopes on this investigation (Penna, 2022).…”

“…Years later, in 1975, while discussing large groups, Foulkes (1975: 54) warned about the conductor’s awareness of the power of his/her suggestive influence, reminding the conductor to resist the illusion of becoming the leader of the group instead of just leading it. Foulkes’s words are a clear reference to the illusory power of mass leaders highlighted by Freud in 1921 (Penna, 2022).…”

Book Review: The Portuguese School of Group Analysis. Towards a Unified and Integrated Approach to Theory Research and Clinical Work

“…For Ferro and França, 'the transference-countertransference dynamic is what introduces each one's personal internal matrix into the dynamic matrix and the process of mirroring, resonance and ego training in action are responsible for new introjections which will alter the original personal matrix of each member' (p. 62). So, the group-analytic group allows for transforming early attachment patterns, renewing the development of each member's internal relational matrix (Penna, 2022).…”