Social Actors and Social Groups: A Return to Heterogeneity in Social Psychology

For the contemporary reader of Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public the analyses of communicative systems in the book provides a challenging occasion for reconsidering current social psychological thinking about the character of social groups. In Moscovici's careful delineation of the communicative systems of diffusion, propagation and propaganda through his content analysis of the French press, one can also see the description of different types of group structured through distinctive social psychological organisations. Moscovici himself suggests that the genres of diffusion, propagation and propaganda are each linked to the construction of a specific type of social‐psychological object, opinion, attitude and stereotype respectively. But one can also identify different forms of affiliation corresponding to each communicative genre, and consequently also different representations of the people who constitute both the in‐group and the out‐group in each instance. The affiliative bonds might be described as forms of sympathy, communion and solidarity.