Large Group Identity, Psychological Borders, and Unofficial Diplomacy.

The current paper is an invited keynote from the 2023 Connect conference of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. The author describes the large group identity and how it develops alongside the individual self. Barriers to coexistence among groups is explored as well as ways of fostering peace.

Remembering Jimmy Carter and his Contribution to the Role of Psychoanalysis in World Affairs.

In February 2023 98-year-old former President Jimmy Carter entered hospice care and began spending his remaining time at home with his family. This paper describes his personal, and The Carter Center's financial, support for applying psychoanalytic approaches to understanding and calming large-group conflicts in Estonia and Albania and helping to enrich psychoanalytic knowledge of large-group psychology.

Remembering Gorbachev.

Since the middle of last century the so-called "rational actor" models in international and domestic affairs (von Rochau, 1853) supported the assumption that a political leader's decision-making is logical and unaffected by psychological factors. In 1993 eight psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrists formed a team to study political leaders' personality characteristics and the psychodynamics of their decision-making processes. They met twice a year for five years and studied political leaders with obsessional, paranoid, schizoid, narcissistic and depressive personality organizations (Volkan, Akhtar, Dorn, Kafka, Kernberg, Olsson, Rogers, & Shanfield, 1998).

A look at Albert Einstein's question "why war?" with a focus on large-group psychology.

There are observable realistic factors - economic, legal and political - that contribute to initiating and maintaining international conflicts, including starting wars. Behind such factors there are also various psychological elements. This paper recalls correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud and Freud's pessimistic response to the question "Why War?" and explores this question from the point of view of large-group psychology.

TRAUMA, PREJUDICE, LARGE-GROUP IDENTITY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS.

Escaping Nazi annexation of Austria, Sigmund Freud and his family left there in 1938 to live the rest of their lives in exile in the house now known as the Freud Museum in London. This paper is based upon the author's Holocaust Day Memorial Lecture delivered virtually at this museum on January 27, 2021, which marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. Besides remembering those who were lost during World War II, the content of this paper includes a description of different types of massive traumas, with a focus on disasters at the hand of the Other, and their impact on individuals and large groups.

LARGE-GROUP IDENTITY, WHO ARE WE NOW? LEADER-FOLLOWER RELATIONSHIPS AND SOCIETAL-POLITICAL DIVISIONS.

This paper aims to explore severe societal-political divisions and interferences with democratic processes and human rights issues in many locations around the world, including in the United States, and examines the role of leader-follower relationships related to such developments. The term "large group" describes hundreds, thousands or millions of people- most of whom will never see or even know about each other as individuals, but who share many of the same sentiments. This paper first describes how a child becomes a member of a large-group and how adults sometimes develop a second type of large-group identity.

Psychoanalytic Thoughts on the European Refugee Crisis and the Other.

There are many aspects-political, economic, legal, medical, cultural, religious-of the present refugee crisis in Europe. Difficulties at border crossings, settlement programs, life-saving issues, and security measures come to mind immediately, but the refugee crisis also needs to be examined from a psychological angle. This paper outlines psychoanalytic findings on voluntary and forced immigration and human responses to the Other.