Society becoming a group: group psychology, metapsychology and contemporary group formations

Abstract Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego defined a field that turns not only to organized and enduring institutions but, above all, to discontinuous moments in which collectives suddenly emerge and bind individuals beyond conscious intention. It is this second dimension—the eruptive constitution of a group—that gives the discipline its specificity, for it reveals how the social itself is produced through unconscious processes of binding, displacement, and enjoyment, in which not only the individual but the social structure itself is suspended. This paper situates Freud’s account alongside his other treatments of the collective: his early theorization of hypnosis as a substitute for mass influence; his analysis of the joke as a shared mechanism of psychic release; and his conception of the analytic situation as a minimal yet decisive social bond. Read together, these texts articulate a metapsychological horizon in which group psychology is not an extension of sociology but a theory of the very conditions under which collectivity appears. On this basis, the present paper reactivates Freud’s legacy as a conceptual tool for analyzing contemporary formations. The specific case examined is the post 7 October constellation, in which actors with previously neutral or even contrary positions became inscribed into a collective dynamic that radically exceeded their intentions, demonstrating how fragile yet decisive binding agents can generate formations irreducible to institutional continuity.