ABSTRACT
The contemporary influential theorists - Ronald Fairbairn, D. W. Winnicott, and Foulkes - and the British child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, agreed in their resistance to the then prevailing one-person perspective and argued that the environment, the family, the group, and the relational perspective motivate human psychological development. Attachment relations (theory of attachment) to the primary caregivers do not organize all the infant's interaction contacts, but contribute together with other kinds of relationships that the child develops, such as peer-learning, and companion relationships (theory of companionship) to the child's socio-emotional maturity. Security in attachment relationships provides good conditions for intersubjective learning, while insecurity and trauma in such relationships undermine the development of this mentalization ability. With its diversity of relationships, the group has decisive importance in people's lives, beginning with their very early experiences. In this chapter, the authors describe the group’s fundamental importance for man.
