The Relation Between Mental and Social Systems

Abstract

In the following essay I shall try to elucidate the relation between mental and social systems. In my opinion this is one of the most interesting aspects of psycho-social work, because the interactional intersection is important for the understanding of dyadic relationships, for example in therapist-patient relationships, and also in institutional contexts (e.g. social-psychiatric networks (see Nissen, 1991)). I have focussed the following study on the mental system within the interpenetration of mental and social systems and show the necessity of psychodynamic processes for a complete understanding of the interpenetration; i.e. the reduction of the mental system to a cognitive or conscious system is not possible.

Before I start to discuss my system-theoretical point of view (sect. 2), I want to describe a short sequence from a group therapy session, in which the empirical presentation is strongly selected to illustrate the problems and questions concerning the general systems theory touched on in the third part (sect. 3).