A Group Analytic Approach to Understanding Mass Violence: The Holocaust, Group Hallucinosis and False Beliefs

A Group Analytic Approach to Understanding Mass Violence makes an analytic examination of the enactment of genocide by Nazi Germany during World War II to explore how mass and state-sponsored violence can arise within societies and how the false beliefs that are used to justify such actions are propagated within society. Bennett Roth makes use of Bion’s concept of ‘Hallucinosis’ to describe the formation of false group beliefs that lead to murderous violence.

Drawing on both group analysis and psychoanalysis, Roth explores in relation to genocide:

• how people form and identify with groups
• the role of family groups
• how conflict can arise and be managed
• how violence can arise and be justified by false beliefs
• how we can best understand these dysfunctional group dynamics to avoid such violence.

A Group Analytic Approach to Understanding Mass Violence will be of great interest to all psychoanalysts and group analysts seeking to understand the role of false beliefs in their patients and society more generally. It will also be of interest to students and scholars of Holocaust studies programs or anyone seeking to understand the perpetration of genocide in the past and present.

Bennett Roth, PhD, is a Faculty member at the Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Hospital and maintains a private practice in New York City, USA. He has lectured internationally on group therapy, psychoanalysis and film, and on the work of Wilfred Bion.