Closed Meeting: Freud Lecture: Group Psychology and the Secret Committee

Dr. Balter’s lecture applies ideas about group formation that he has been working on for many years to a particular and well studied episode in psychoanalytic history—the formation of the Secret Committee, a group that was ostensibly assembled to safeguard and guide the Freudian psychoanalytic movement. Following Freud’s postulates about group formation, Dr. Balter develops his own ideas about the formation of what he calls “the leaderless group” and uses them to explain the functioning of the Secret Committee. It is hoped that Dr. Balter’s approach will add to what is already known about this episode in the history of psychoanalysis.