ABSTRACT
Full leave-taking in group analysis pushes the patient to evade the psychotic part of his personality in which the fantasy of the primal father or primal mother, largely conceived as two imaginary figures fostering pathological narcissism and false consciousness and reinforces the neurotic part of his personality which favours genuine sociality and social consciousness. The development of the ego ideal marks the transition of the child and, later, the adult to real sociality as opposed to the pseudo-sociality and narcissism expressed by the maternal qualities of the ideal ego. Groupishness can easily become strongly phallic, always indicating the degree to which it has regressed to pathogenic primary or secondary narcissism. A good enough ending in the group-analytic psychotherapy of patients with neurosis strongly depends on the patients’ ability to accept frustration and symbolic castration. The ending of group analysis will be compared with the ending that takes place in psychoanalysis, as described first by S. H. Foulkes.
