ABSTRACT
One of the main issues in the debate between psychoanalysis and group analysis is the question of the relation between the individual and the group. Although Freud declared, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, that there is no real opposition between individual psychology and social psychology, his whole approach at the time focused on the individual. Sándor Ferenczi was the first to describe a particular syndrome, consisting of depression, suicidal cogitation and acts, severe psychosomatic disturbance, self-destructive behaviour, and a nihilistic philosophy, as a result of having been an unwelcome child in one’s household. In the same vein, over twenty years later, Erik Erikson described as basic trust the outcome of a satisfactory mother–baby relation and as basic mistrust the aftermath of a severe failure of this symbiotic bond, which brings about psychosis.
