MICROCOSM
Structural, Psychological and Religious Evolution in Groups
276 Pages
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published 1966, 1974, 2011
SYNOPSIS
Microcosm presents an intensive analysis of the formation and development of groups. It relates the structural and emotional processes which emerge in this context to large-scale societies. Using case illustrations from self-analytic groups, the author examines changes in the group's relationship to the leader. He traces the origins of the group's revolt against the formal group leader and the emergence of stronger peer relationships. From small group phenomena, a theory of religious evolution is proposed, and interpretations are advanced relating group processes to totemism, libido theory, biblical myth, child development, animal behavior, identification theory and the theory of the primal horde.
REVIEWS
“Microcosm is an important book. Slater convincingly describes the very powerful forces that underlie the behavior of groups in relation to their leaders and he touches upon the boundary problems that beset group life, as well as the lives of individuals in the group.”
Boris M. Astrachan, M.D., Yale University
“The first part of the book is of special interest in connection with the application of psychoanalytic concepts to the development of groups and of group psychology, particularly those of Freud as given in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego and Totem and Taboo. The illustrations given from the training group sessions are most interesting and quite apt, seeming to confirm the ideas of Freud and others on the dynamics of leader-member interaction and group development.”
Aaron Stein, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly
“This excellent book is what a book should be. It is a critical and concerned examination of the author's experience, which includes but does not confine itself to what is conventionally de- fined as ‘data’.”
Too many of our books are written, as it were, with metallic tongs; they hold the problem and the people studied at a seemingly safe distance, and they often fail to recognize and signal the manner in which author himself is inevitably and deeply implicated in them. Here, however, method and man, social scientist and subject, personal concern and professional interest are richly fused in a conscientious effort at intellectual exploration. Slater's work is crucially distinguished by its unpretentious penetration into the one world where the actor and the acted upon share a common fate. It is thus a uniquely serious piece of work.”"
Alvin W. Gouldner, American Sociological Review
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EXCERPTS
“The sharing of fantasies about the leader tends to rescue the members from this horror, but initially it is a desperate remedy. The leader is differentiated out from the mass partly because it is perceptually easy to do so, but partly in order to counterbalance this mass—to create a hero to ward off the devouring dragon.”
“A group builds up its leader in order to gain more mana for itself.”
"An individual who enters a group for the first time tends to perceive it as an undifferentiated mass... Insofar as he is discriminating he distorts, and insofar as he is empirical he is vague... All other group members are perceiving the group in a similar way, so that the first shared perception of the group members is that the group, with one exception (different in each case), is an undifferentiated mass. Furthermore, not only is this perception not in the forefront of consciousness, but also there is no awareness that it is shared."