ENTITIES AND ORGANIZATION IN INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP BEHAVIOR: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Abstract

Are problems in the field of psychiatry and social psychiatry sufficiently well defined to appear amenable to scientific attack? In this centenary of Freud's birth, one thinks immediately of his predominant interest in the psychosexual development of the individual within family contexts; of his concept of that individual as an energy-distributing mechanism; and of his awareness of the possibility of symbolic substitutions, or surrogates, for parental figures. All individuals were regarded as possessed in some degree of typical human mechanisms of defense, as they underwent this psycho-sexual development and reached out, or were repelled from, figures beyond the original parent and sibling circle