ABSTRACT
The relationship between ego and id was explored at some length in the work under discussion, but it is predominantly seen as one of Sigmund Freud's most interesting and brilliant contributions to understanding social processes. Reaching beyond the restricted psychoanalytic community, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego has had an impressive impact on philosophers, particularly the Frankfurt school; on sociologists, particularly Mitscherlich in Germany, Moscovici in France, and Lasch in the United States. This chapter discusses the challenging field of the relationship between psychoanalysis and culture, and analyses whether Freud's ideas can help to understand this complex situation. In spite of the many problems that led to the general designation of an "actual crisis of psychoanalysis", "in many university settings psychoanalytic thinking has continued to grow in the area of literary analysis, art, and the humanities in general".
