Neuroscience and the Social Unconscious

Introduction

There has been quite a lot written about the social unconscious in group analysis recently. The social unconscious is the most alive of the group analytic concepts. Our discussion is a healthy one, but each of the theoretical contributions to ideas about the social unconscious defines the concept slightly differently. The impression left by the whole discussion is of a slippery and foggy concept that is difficult to understand and use creatively.

Our present social unconscious concept discussions can be compared to the early conceptions of gravity. Like gravity, the social unconscious cannot be seen. Like gravity, the social unconscious can only be known by its effects, and its effects are varied.

There are three basic concepts of gravity. For Aristotle, gravity was a property of each specific object. The social unconscious equivalent would be that the social (of sociology) and the individual (of psychoanalysis) are different objects with different conscious and unconscious principles from each other. In the 17th-century, Newton created a revolution in thinking by showing that gravity was a force that was present in all matter, the smallest as well as the largest. This is where the group analytic concept of social unconscious is at the moment. We recognize that we are dealing with one social force that creates individual, group, political and economic effects. Two hundred years after Newton, Einstein created another revolution by answering Newton’s question about how the force of gravity works to hold things together. Einstein’s answer was that gravity was an energy potential created by mass in the space-time continuum. Perhaps this is where the social unconscious concept is capable of going. Gravity is the product of energy forces that define space and time.

Gravity is known to hold everything together, from the smallest atomic particle to the cosmos. Like gravity, the social unconscious is proposed to be a real force that holds everything together socially, from the smallest internal feeling to the largest world community. In this sense, we group analysts are Newtonians. Newton had to create a new mathematics to work with his gravity concept. Likewise, I propose that, in order to work with and fully understand how and why the social unconscious operates the way that it does, we need to take the new findings of neuroscience, the workings of the brain and the body, into account.

The Social Unconscious

It is beyond the scope of this article to delve more deeply into the discussion of gravity and the theory of relativity. I do not intend to do a full review of the various ideas about the social unconscious. A recent paper by Val Parker did this admirably (Parker, 2014). In her review, Parker concludes that there is no need for the concept of the social unconscious because the unconscious is always social. This is the Newtonian level of the discussion of the social unconscious.

I propose here, further to Parker’s analysis, that the new knowledge from neuroscience helps us understand the implications of having an unconscious that is social, although its appearance is individual. In other words, to use another scientific metaphor, neuroscience provides some ideas that act as a catalyst to bring together the various ideas about the social unconscious and to solve some of the dilemmas identified in its discussion. Reciprocally, I propose that the group analysts hold knowledge about how people relate personally to each other in both closed and open ways. The boundaries between the individual and the social and between the conscious and the unconscious are always changing. This information about people is useful to neuroscience. From sitting in groups, we learn how people see themselves and each other from the inside, in interaction.

Despite gravity metaphors, it seems strange to bring together neuroscience and the social unconscious. At first sight, they seem to be opposites or not in the same world. There are a lot of negative feelings about science in the therapy world in general and vice versa. Is group analysis really a science? Is psychoanalysis a science or an art? Certainly, Foulkes and Freud considered themselves to be scientists in a social laboratory, as well as therapists in the consulting room.

Many would disagree with the way that the current neuroscientists evaluate and use their data. Neuroscientists tend to think that the physical processes of the brain in each individual head define each human. However, the data and the detail that the neurosciences are producing can also inform and enrich the data of psychoanalysis and group analysis and help our patients, and not only by telling us what we already know. We group analysts can also feed into the process of putting meaning to the science by our knowledge of what humans do to and for each other socially, in pairs and in groups.

Psychoanalysis and neuroscience share a common beginning. Freud and Foulkes were both scientific in the way that they observed, evaluated and produced understanding in others. As therapists, we observe, evaluate and produce understanding in others all the time. As practising group analysts, we are always bringing new eyes and voices into our work. While working with our peers, trainees, patients and groups, we also learn. This is our science.

Foulkes

Foulkes did not use the term ‘social unconscious’ very often. In 1948, while discussing the group’s therapeutic factors, Foulkes said that the ‘collective unconscious’ is a condenser that brings out the deeper unconscious material in the group, like symbols, dreams and phobias from the individual group members. (Foulkes, 1948: 67). He continued to refer to the social unconscious as the condenser of the group’s unconscious, elaborating a bit more in each text. In 1957, Foulkes and Antony unpacked this concept a bit further. Referring to the ‘social unconscious’ for the first time, they said that the condenser works because: ‘Each individual’s feelings and reactions will reflect the influences exerted on him by the other individuals in the group and by the group as a whole, however, little he is aware of this’ (Foulkes and Antony, 1957: 42). The Foulkesian social unconscious, then, is an invisible force that creates a condenser phenomenon, by mutual interpersonal influence in the group, and leads to the communication of deep unconscious and conscious materials that might otherwise have remained unvoiced and unknown. It is the communication of this material in words that is the therapy.

Later in the same book, Foulkes described the group consciousness as everything that is seen, heard and understood by all. In the group unconscious are all the thoughts that cannot be voiced, and thus are acted out or discharged through the stimulus of shared group event, like a break, for example (Foulkes and Antony, 1957: 262–63).

In his last full book, first published in 1975, Foulkes picked up on other aspects of the social unconscious. He wrote about how the conductor promotes a culture or atmosphere in the group, which is one of mutual respect and free-floating discussion (Foulkes, [1975] 1986: 95–96). The unconscious process of interpretation in the group is continuous, Foulkes says, and this process of making the unconscious into conscious, clearly communicable, material is done by this free-floating discussion. Free-floating discussion is the group form of Freud’s method of free association. The interpretation of the material by the group members, including the conductor, comes by way of the associations, reactions and responses of the group members to each other (Foulkes, [1975] 1986: 117–122).

There is one important passage that is not often quoted. This passage appears in Foulkes’ selected papers, which were edited by Elizabeth Foulkes and published in 1990. It is in a short article that was written for an American journal in 1968:

In group analytic theory, we do not orient ourselves by discerning ‘intrapsychic’, ‘interpersonal’ and group dynamic processes. We believe and can show that they are the same processes which can and must be described from different standpoints according to the task which we pursue. ‘Society’ is inside the individual, just as well as outside, and what is ‘intrapsychic’ is at the same time shared by the group, unconsciously most of the time, except in group-analytic group. The borderline of what is ‘in’ or ‘outside’ is constantly moving and the experience of these changes is of particular significance. (Foulkes, 1968 in E. Foulkes, 1990: 184)

I believe that this statement clarifies what Foulkes’ ideas of the social unconscious were and how they are capable of informing and being informed by neuroscience. Foulkes envisaged a social force that is unconscious most of the time. We cannot see it or feel it, but it strongly influences and determines our actions, often despite our conscious thoughts. This social unconscious permeates us. The social unconscious emerges into consciousness by way of the continuous integrative power of free-floating discussion, both as free association and as a condenser phenomenon, bringing out the deeper levels of unconscious symptoms and actions, including physical symptoms. Group members have an experience of shifting internal and external boundaries. Each individual’s internal processes are, fundamentally, aspects of social processes that are both internal and external. The (group-analytic) group is a special place where the transformation from unconscious to conscious can happen because a group culture is created that is different from the parent cultures of every other individual group member. These differences allow new elements into personal thought. Internal and external dialogue between group members in the group also facilitates internal and external dialogue between group members and their important others outside of the group.

Elias, Stacy, Dalal

Norbert Elias provided an important conceptual bridge between inside and outside. For Elias, the individual is singular and society, or the group, is plural. Elias wrote a sociology that was both psychological and historical. In The Civilizing Process (2000), Elias described how manners changed psyches in Europe with the rise of the absolutist state. Shame became guilt, for example. In The Society of Individuals (2001), Elias described how western philosophy is based on the assumption of what he calls ‘homo clausus’, the man closed off in his own head looking upon the outside that is different from him. He asserted that, in fact, humans are ‘homini aperti’, open men, open to each other and permeating each other in a growing and developing interdependence. Thus, it is not as it seems, and as the neuroscientists think, that each brain is closed off within each head. Although this may be what many neuroscientists think, the actual research into the brain shows that the brain is incredibly open to the individual’s environment. Neuroscience is also showing us that humans do not work in structures, but in a sort of dynamic equilibrium where balance is kept by constant small adjustments, as in standing or walking (see Elias, [1994] 2000; 2001).

Ralph Stacey provided a second conceptual bridge. Ralph Stacey contributed an interpersonal aspect to this dynamic equilibrium. He started from George Mead in looking at gestures and how people respond to each other’s gestures. Stacey added a neurological and biological basis for his thinking. In Stacey’s Complexity Theory, he sees the dynamic equilibrium as it works between people. There are two major systems, a calming one (opioid) and an arousing one (epinephrine/adrenalin). When people are attracted to each other, they move closer and are calmed. When too close, they are aroused and move away. All relationships and conversations work on this basis, moving closer, more intimate, and moving away, more adventurous. Health is defined being able to move closer or further away according to which feelings are aroused between people in the living present. Health can be defined by Winnicott’s baby throwing the spool of thread to show himself or herself that it always comes back (because mother or carer fetches it back). Winnicott’s baby is learning that he or she can both be close and still able to move away.

Stacey also showed how power is being constantly created in relationships and conversations. If Person A has something that Person B wants, say approval, then Person A can withhold the approval and thus has power over Person B. In relatively equal conversations, the power might go back and forth as the proximity does. However, imbalances can also appear. Sometimes, it is unclear where the power lies, as in the dependence of the master on the slave, as well as in the dependence of the slave on the master, thus the concept of interdependence.

Stacey’s complexities depend on both parties being in the present with each other and not in situations of misunderstanding. Misunderstandings can (and do) occur when Person A says or does something that evokes other, past, situations for Person B. If unaware that he or she is relating to the past, Person B may then react as though he or she is in this other situation. That is, Person B is not in the present, but in the past. For Stacey, larger groups and institutions are the result of patterns, power and interdependence that are produced by the interactions. Stacey, Elias and Foulkes come together on this point. Larger groups and institutions are based on many, many smaller interactions. The foundations of society are the interactions that happen between people from moment to moment (see Stacey, 2003).

Farhad Dalal made this point even more clearly. Dalal started off from a criticism of the other group analytic and psychoanalytic theorists of the social unconscious. Dalal distinguished between the orthodox Foulkes and the radical Foulkes: the orthodox Freudian psychoanalyst and the radical group analyst. Dalal saw the other theorists of the social unconscious, namely, Haim Weinberg (2007), Earl Hopper (2001), Vamik Volkan (2001) and Tom Ormay (2012), as retaining the dichotomy of individual and social from orthodox Foulkes, often seeing the individual and the social as being in conflict with one another.

In truth, it is very difficult to think without the dichotomy of individual and social, inside and outside. These differentiations are what our culture, as well as senses and perceptions are telling us all the time. However, Dalal agrees with Elias that processes are continuous and always changing. ‘States’ that we often perceive as structures, are abstractions created by choosing arbitrarily where something starts and where it finishes. Dalal uses the example of circles drawn randomly, which then create insides and outsides that would not be there without the markings (Dalal, 2001: 545).

Put another way, Dalal said that Foulkes went on from Freud to make the object of study not the individual in relationships, but individuals in relation to each other. Elias went one step further to study individuals-in-social-relations with each other. Social relations involve power relations. ‘Existing we’s must be part of forming I’s from the start of the developmental process. The relation between the we and the not-we is a power relationship. Power patterns the communicational field’ (Dalal, 2001: 548). (See also Weinberg, 2007; Hopper, 2001; Volkan, 2001; Ormay, 2012).

The Brain Is the Organ of Sociality

Mark Sohms and Oliver Turnbull have written a helpful book linking, in their case, the new findings of neuroscience with psychoanalytic concepts. In writing this book, they established a new area of thought called ‘neuropsychoanalysis’. I think that group analysts are not paying enough attention to this new movement. I also think that group analysis and the brain processes combine together much better than simply psychoanalysis on its own and that the concept of the social unconscious makes this clear. Sohms and Turnbull have called their book The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Subjective Experience (2002).

As the title suggests, Sohms and Turnbull start their book with a formulation of inside and outside. For them, the brain connects these two worlds in each individual. In a physical sense, the brain, mostly without our knowledge, intention or attention, manages the homeostasis of the body, temperature breathing, digestion and so on. These processes take place in the spinal cord and in the brainstem. The bulk of the rest of the brain is involved in its other function, to take in information and create perceptions of the world outside the individual body. Each human brain is capable of taking in much more information, in a monitoring sort of way, than is ever acted upon. The brain uses this information to anticipate what might be needed in the future. Sohms and Turnbull suggest that what might seem to be two different levels, inside and outside, or two different activities, are actually two different points of view of the same processes. The internal processes in the brain do not cause intentions or actions in the ‘outside’ world, any more than intentions or actions cause internal changes. They are two different aspects of the same thing. The intrapersonal (inside) is the same as the interpersonal (outside), as Foulkes said. It is this insight, more than anything else, that opens the way for the ideas around the social unconscious, in its turn, clarifying the social unconscious concept itself (see Sohms and Turnbull, 2002).

The dualism of inside and outside also helps makes sense of the job of the psychoanalyst, which is to try and help the patient describe how his or her inner experience of being an infant and a child feels in a particular body. Psychoanalysis, as a therapy, bases itself on the couple. However, in humans, there is always also a third perspective, even when there is only a couple in the room. This third perspective was certainly there before language. For the baby, the third is the mother, the family, the culture and the environment. As the theory of the social unconscious states, these are all different points of view implicit in every human process.

I propose that the findings in neuroscience point to the idea that the brain is the organ of human (and mammal) sociality. Further, that the development of sociality fuelled the growth and developments of the brain and drove the other elements of the evolution of the human body and mind. That is, the increasingly intense social relationships that were needed to deal with climate change in Europe and Africa acted upon the primates in such a way as to fuel brain growth which then formed the rest of what is unique about the human body, including walking on two legs, and its consequences. We are talking about a process that has a marked start about nine million years ago (see Begun, 2007; Russon and Begun, 2004).

The Most Important Element of the Human Environment Is Other Humans

It is one of those obvious insights, but not usually in consciousness that, when we look around us at our environment, we see that the most important part of our environment is other humans. Other humans and our relationships with them and their relationships with each other fill our eyes and our time and our minds. Our close and emotional relationships with others of our own species are not unique among animals, but our relationships with each other are uniquely intense and penetrating on an exponential scale, even when compared with our closest living primate relative.

Our early relationships form templates, which later experiences with people can confirm or disconfirm, and we are able to do this because of the power of our brains and our bodies to connect with each other in the living present, both consciously and unconsciously, both directly and indirectly throughout our lives. As we can see in the difficulties in accepting climate change and doing something about it, for example, our relationships with each other, personally and politically, are stronger, even, than our relationship with nature. Other humans are the human environment. Our brains evolved to make this both possible and necessary.

The Brain is Associational

So, how do these individual and social brain processes work? The brain is made up of neurons, which are the cells of the brain. Neurons form networks, so these individual cells are ‘wired’ together, metaphorically, in networks, Foulkes’ matrix. The neurons are connected by dendrites that gather information and axons that send information out. The information received and sent takes the form of chemical/electrical impulses, and there are various varieties of neuron pathways, connections and facilitating or braking chemicals. The brain, in a physical sense, is like Foulkes’ dynamic matrix. It is working and changing all the time, even when we are asleep.

Much of each person’s brain is formed inside the mother’s body. As the brain is forming, the baby is developing by human biological imperative. At the same time, the human baby is absorbing, through the mother’s skin and from the mother’s body, her environment in the living present. The baby’s environment in the living present is initially mother’s relationship to her human environment, including her culture, sounds, tastes, moods and personal relationships. This process of inheritance of specific time and place continues in a different form after birth. The human brain is not entirely formed when the human baby is born. In the first months of life, although the mother and baby are apparently physically separated, they are formed into a unit by the baby and birth hormones, namely, oxytocin and prolactin.

Neurons connect by association. Those that fire together ‘wire’ together. The more often the new connections are repeated, the easier it is for them to connect the next time, and each connection is faster and more efficient. Thus, the baby’s brain is growing and connecting at a fantastic rate in intimate contact with mother and, through mother, to the sounds, smells, tastes, moods and other feelings in the baby’s human environment. The totality of relationships in the baby’s environment form the associated templates into which the baby is born. These early templates do not go away. They can, however, be weakened or strengthened by new associations, especially repeated ones and associations which are connected in an atmosphere of trust. Thus, the ‘foundation matrix’ of the baby is vital, but changes throughout life. The ‘primitive’ connections do not go away. Sometimes new connections will supersede them and sometimes they mumble away in the background, unconsciously.

According to Foulkes, free associational conversations between people bring these connections into consciousness in the group. The group conversation provides the condenser effect which evokes old but still active connections and makes it possible for them to become conscious. Once conscious, the connections from the past can be expressed in language and confirmed or superseded by new connections. Foulkes’ condenser effect is the effect of the social inside and outside us, the third position, the other.

This happens in the group. The therapy group is a safe place for the social unconscious process to give way to more conscious thought and action for the group members. I think that this process also happens in ordinary social life. This statement might seem rather mundane to a group analyst. However, I think that it is an important and profound idea when put into the context of the brain and how it functions. That is, this constant process of associational thoughts that evokes the past, on the one hand, and attempts to predict the future, on the other hand, is evidence that the human brain is primarily a social organ designed to form and maintain the life of the individual human, which is predominantly social, and has been predominantly social for millions of years.

Furthermore, although many of the templates that form human lives are laid down before language, it is through the social medium of language that our thoughts are formed. Language can only exist to enable communication between individuals. However, the approach/avoidance dynamics that Ralph Stacey uses also carry on in silent internal conversations when we are alone. Sometimes we only hear part of the conversation, as when we are thinking that we are ‘stupid’ for not knowing something. This thought can be interpreted as a power relationship between two parts of the self. Sometimes it helps for the silent part of the conversation to contribute a mitigating circumstance. ‘I was only a child’, or a defiance ‘who cares what you think?’ In a group, the other group members will often speak the silent part of the internal conversation, enabling each group member to be able to ‘answer back’ next time, silently or loudly, inside himself or herself.

Stacey wrote about calming (opioid) and arousing (epinephrine) reactions in conversations and relationships. Thinking is always influenced by feeling, whether we allow ourselves to be aware of it or not. Neuroscientists are now telling us much more about how this connection works. With neuroscientific knowledge, as professionals, we are better able to spot these processes as they happen, learn from them and help our patients and clients to learn from them. As people, we can be more aware of how it feels to have emotions shifting from one neural pathway to another in our heads as well as in our bodies. As professionals, we can help people become more aware of how thought and emotion combine to help people help each other in ordinary social life. As a corollary, we can help social planners to be more aware of how good relationships can be encouraged and fostered and how these be passed on from person to person, consciously and unconsciously, personally and politically. The concept of ‘social capital’, which can be promoted or destroyed politically, is especially relevant here. ‘Social capital’ is related to how trust can be fostered, or not, in new public, private and charitable projects (See Ostrom, 1990 and Ostrom and Ahn, 2003).

Basic Emotions Arise in the Limbic Area of the Brain

The brain has various physical divisions and functions. In physical terms, the human cerebral cortex, the outside visible layer, is both larger and more densely connected than in other animals. However, other sets of structures, part of which is called the limbic system, we share with other mammals, particularly. Our emotions are based in the limbic system. The limbic system connects the higher order thinking (our cognitive capacity) to the rest of our body, through which we recognize our feelings and express them.

In essence, and most remarkably, the evolutionary history of the brain is written in its structure and function. The process of evolution has left relics of the past. These relics are, by and large, still functioning, as are more recently evolved structures and functions, such as language. In ears, for example, there is one system for gross and sudden sounds and another system which allows is to distinguish fine differences in sounds. This second hearing system is perfectly attuned, in humans, to pick out the human voice from other noises.

Dynamic Homeostasis

The limbic system, also known as the mammalian brain, is made up of visible structures of neurons in the middle of the brain and on top of the spinal cord. The limbic system connects to the cerebral cortex by means of neurons (dendrites and axons) plus facilitating chemicals (neurotransmitters, like the opioids and epinephrine). These connections work both ways, from the body to the brain and from the brain to body, in homologous, but distinct, sets of connections. In other words, the brain and the body work together in continuous feedback loops. This promotes a dynamic homeostasis in which the body seems to be still, but is constantly readjusting itself to the environment, which, in humans, is mostly other humans or connected to other humans in an interdependent way.

The main principle is that impulses from the limbic system, whatever their origin, have an arousing effect on the brain, and the cerebral cortex connections have a calming effect on the emotions. Thus, you might often hear your patients or clients comforting themselves, which also indicates that they are feeling frightened or insecure.

Knowing how these physical processes work is crucially relevant to understanding both how it feels on the inside to be a particular human being (leading to empathy) and how it looks to the other humans with whom individual humans are constantly involved. This is how knowledge of both social and individual points of view, internal and external, singular and plural, can be better understood. Better understanding of these processes results in better understanding of self and other, which is useful both inside and outside the consulting room.

We do not work in structure or static equilibrium. We work on principles of association (free association, free-floating discussion). Dynamic equilibrium is, a kind of perennial balancing between forces where we are always growing and changing, or stopping ourselves from growing and changing, even when we seem to be steady and fixed. Each action and reaction changes a person’s brain chemistry and sometimes the actual architecture of the brain. We are not particularly unitary. We have many different forces and associations working all the time and at the same time. Our brains are modular, and at times, not all the modules are working in the same direction. We have different forces dominant in different layers. We can hope for a kind of coherence in ourselves and in our lives. However, it is very possible that coherence does not happen without conflict, both inside and outside of course, because the inside and outside processes are one and the same.

It is here that the condenser phenomenon of the group becomes important. Because the layers and processes in the brain are not unitary and may not even be very integrated, individuals experience themselves as groups on an unconscious level. In order to achieve integration, the internal (and external) groups need to be able to be in dialogue with each other. That is, the silent receiver of the harsh superego, for example, needs to be able to have a voice. In therapy groups, we often observe the phenomenon of different group voices reflecting known and unknown parts of an individual as he or she speaks. We observe other similar phenomena of group projections, and particularly scapegoating. The external dialogue in the group enables an internal dialogue in each of the group participants.

Clinical and Political Implications

One important corollary from the relationship of the emotional limbic system and the calming cerebral brain is that our basic emotions are held in common with other humans (a foundation matrix), but our forms of perceptions, interpretation and response are both culturally and individually specific. In therapy, we work with people to bring emotions and thoughts into focus using interpretation to translate from person to person, from inside to outside and from past to present, so that feelings can be expressed in ways that are capable of being understood by others in ordinary adult social life. What must be contained are the basic emotions that provoke the thoughts. What must be understood are the specific individual and cultural connections.

This is social because the individual does not, at any point, exist on his or her own. Our human brains are there to contain the social and help us to be our specific selves with others. So, is the social really unconscious? In some ways, the social is unconscious because we often do not pay attention to it. It is unconscious because we take it for granted. As Dalal points out, this kind of unconscious, out of something like habit or lack of attention, is not the same as the Freudian unconscious, which implies defence or repression when knowns become unknowns until they are evoked. The Freudian unconscious presupposes a kind of braking system, common in the brain, where one process stops another, through the activation of a negative feedback association. It is clear from this analysis that the unconscious is a process, maybe more than one process, not a defined space in the brain. In fact, it is unlikely that the unconscious is defined at all, since, as Foulkes points out, the boundary between unconscious and conscious is constantly changing.

I have here reviewed only a small part of the new knowledge of neuroscience that can enlighten the concept of the social unconscious in group analysis. It turns out that what is social in the architecture and processes of the brain is related to both conscious and unconscious states. This social is a constant and crucial influence on brain growth, mental health and evolution. Consciousness is a rather more tricky concept, perhaps akin to hidden, lost, unquestioned or unchallenged neuronal connections. Looking at the social nature of the brain, beyond its individual appearance, the problem becomes less about what makes the brain social and perhaps more about what defines and creates the integrated, conscious individual, and this is what we see in groups and also in couples and in solitary thoughts. In fact, the modular nature of the brain makes it look more like a group inside the individual, and if this is the case, group analysts have much to contribute in a dialogue with neuroscientists.

I could go on citing how the brain is the social organ of the human with examples from the various memory processes to the ideas about mirror neurons, both ways that people get into each other’s heads to form the specific individual human. I would like to mention, though, the work of Jaak Panksepp because of its relevance to clinical practice and human mutual understanding. Jaak Panksepp is a neuroscientist who has studied mammalian brains through years of experiments with mammals. Our limbic system is very similar in appearance to the mammal system. Panksepp has only looked at mammal emotional behaviour. However, he proposed that humans, like mammals, operate from an emotional base. Sohms and Turnbull cited extensively from Panksepp. One of Panksepp’s main contributions is to specify seven emotional pathways in the brain that all mammals have in common, including humans: Seeking, Fear, Anger, Lust, Care, Panic/Grief and Play. These pathways have been identified through experimental science and constitute our basic emotions. With some sensitivity, the shifts from one pathway to another can be felt as physical/emotional shifts and worked with clinically (see Panksepp and Biven, 2012).

I have only just scratched the surface of the power of neuroscientific knowledge to influence psychodynamic and psychoanalytic theory and practice. Conceptualizing the brain as the organ of the social, which is both conscious and unconscious, links up our therapeutic knowledge from the consulting room with the other human sciences, such as biology, sociology and philosophy. It enables more precise understandings of emotional and social concepts such as power and greed. Conceptualizing the brain as the organ of the social also means that we can influence how this neuroscientific knowledge can be used outside of the medical model of individual health and illness and in everyday life. The idea that everything that we do and do not do has an effect on other people and everything that others do and do not do has an effect on us is quite a profound one. A generally deeper recognition of human interdependence, as opposed to the present ideology of individuality and autonomy, values the social. The idea that we feel differently at different levels of ourselves is also quite a profound one. The idea that we can look after ourselves and our individuality without sacrificing our social environment is reassuring, as is the idea that this is the purpose of our brains.

The knowledge of this most recent, but still basic, neuroscientific knowledge is useful clinically as well as theoretically. As a clinician, you can observe the movement between basic feelings and more cognitive defences, such as self-containment in the living present of the consulting room. You can hear dialogue between different self-fragments and associations from the past and in the present. As a patient, you can start to feel when basic emotions are triggered, distinguish between them and open up a thinking space that allows you to recognize your specific basic habits and personal reflex social actions. You can make better decisions about what you want to do in any particular moment. You can begin to operate with enlightened self-interest instead of feelings caught up and split between having some sense of your own emotional needs and those of others. You can have better conversations. As a group conductor, you can recognize how each individual voice is contributing to a culture where strong feelings can be heard, thought about and understood. As a citizen, it is important to recognize when politics is being pursued on emotional as opposed to rational arguments.

What do we mean by the social unconscious, then? In the Foulkes quote of 1968, Foulkes indicated that both the social and the unconscious have shifting boundaries. Both social and unconscious define a dynamic state, and a direction, rather than an attainment or fixed state. In thinking about the concept of the social unconscious, we mean to call attention to the ways that humans influence each other, both constructively and destructively, all the time. Foulkes also emphasized that it is useful to create a culture of mutual respect and free-floating discussion, and this is true both with others in the external world and with others inside oneself. With the new ideas from neuroscience, it becomes possible to understand these processes more precisely and in more detail.

With the catalyst of neuroscience, it becomes clear how the gravity-like concept of social unconscious can become indicative of how large social movements are linked to small internal changes through complex patterning processes, that bring together the psychological, social and political. The social unconscious is very much like modern ideas of gravity, where every body affects every other body and each is the result of conflicting forces. Foulkes said that it is the ever more articulate expression of feelings that is both the analysis and the therapy. Perhaps it is the ever more articulate expression of difficult thoughts and feelings in conversation that can effect change, on the social and political levels, as well as on the personal level.