Why the Group is Mad
Introjection and Psychosis in Freud’s “Group Psychology"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.46.3.12Keywords:
introjection, group psychology, psychosis, melancholia, mania, Sigmund Freud, Sándor Ferenczi, psychoanalysisAbstract
I examine introjection as it is elaborated by Freud in “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.” Against Ferenczi, who invented the term to name a neurotic process, Freud theorizes introjection as a psychotic process. Through Freud’s reinterpretation of introjection, I argue that the group, in Freud, is a psychotic formation, which has the structure of melancholia. I conclude by using introjection to shed light on how melancholia turns into mania, a question that Freud left unanswered in his first theorization of melancholia, the paper “Mourning and Melancholia.”
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