ABSTRACT
Ms Diana Birkett is to be congratulated on bringing to psychoanalysts' attention important issues regarding Psychoanalysis and war. She begins with two criticisms of psychoanalysis: that, generally, it should have had more to say on the effects of social changes on the individual psyche; and that it has an addiction to infantile fantasy and ignores the impact of current realities. Contributions are too numerous to mention but in 1968 a series of papers for a conference on the effects of social disaster was included in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Ms Birkett grants that those psychoanalysts who have developed group work do focus on the impact of current social forces, and she also mentions Elliott Jaques who analysed both factory cultures and how societies create a war mentality. In group and therapeutic community work psychoanalysts operate most closely alongside sociology, one of the disciplines which primarily concentrate on society’s impact on individuals.
