Claudio Neri’s Group is a sharp, theory-rich study of group analysis: how people think, dream, defend, resist, mirror, merge, and mutate inside collective therapeutic space.

This is not fluffy “teamwork makes the dream work” group chat nonsense. It’s psychoanalytic group theory with teeth. Neri looks at the group as a living field: a shared mental and emotional space where unconscious material circulates, disguises itself, becomes atmosphere, and occasionally kicks the furniture over. The book moves through the emerging group state, the fraternal community stage, the group’s common space, self-representation, group thought, oscillations between passions, and the therapeutic function of thought.

Good for readers interested in Freud, Bion, psychoanalysis, group therapy, institutional dynamics, collective behaviour, or the haunted machinery of “the room.” Especially good for anyone who has ever watched a group form its own weather system and thought: ah yes, hell has minutes.

International Library of Group Analysis 8. First English edition, 1998. Paperback. Preface by Parthenope Bion Talamo; foreword by Malcolm Pines. Originally published in Italian in 1995. Very good overall. Clean copy with light handling and minor shelf wear. Previous owner’s name/notes to preliminary page, but no obvious heavy annotation shown in the main text.