ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the nature of the group: the setting in which human beings join with each other in units of varying size and complexity, each greater than the sum of its parts. Human beings are profoundly social animals, 'herd animals', as we have been called in 1916 by Wilfred Trotter, both a distinguished surgeon and also an early observer of human beings in groups. The field of politics is where the difficult negotiations and trade-offs take place which are necessary to maintain the coherent and cooperative functioning of the various units that make up the larger social group. However, the working life of any group has a troublesome underbelly, consisting of the long lasting emotional and psychological derivatives of that earliest grouping of three described: mother, father and child. The great religious and territorial conflicts owe their bloodiness to the kinds of mental mechanisms that find ready expression and a dangerous amplification in groups.
