ABSTRACT
In ‘The factor of number in individual and group dynamics’ (1950) John Rickman wrote that ‘if we were to divide the kinds of psycho-dynamics according to the number of particles or bodies or persons concerned, we could speak of one-and two-body psychologies’. He adds that ‘a three-body psychology’ would deal with ‘all of the derivatives of the Oedipus complex’ (166) and further that a ‘multi-body psychology’ would ‘deal with the psychological forces operative when several or many individuals are together’ (167). Rickman and his colleague Bion were conducting groups and their division of self and human relations into types of bodies derived in part from their need to conceptualise the source, aim and object of differing dynamics in the group.
