As social animals, each of us can only be partly understood through insights into our individual psychodynamics. There is, within us, another principle at work: to preserve the group, even at the expense of the individual.

In this innovative synthesis of classical psychoanalysis and recent interpersonal and object relations psychology, Harold N. Boris constructs a necessary bridge between individual psychodynamics and group dynamics. This bridge rests upon two, complementary foundations: the egoistically- defined pleasure principle of The Couple and the socially defined selection...