When the groups (do not) fall apart: panic and anxiety in Freud’s “Group Psychology”

This article examines Freud’s treatment of panic in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego , where it appears as both the affect of group disintegration and an ill-defined form of anxiety. By connecting this problem to Freud’s later theory of anxiety in Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety and Lacan’s elaboration of anxiety, the article argues that panic functions less as collapse and more as a defensive mechanism that sustains minimal symbolic bonds at moments of crisis. Reinterpreted in this way, panic emerges as a paradoxical guarantor of social cohesion in the group rather than the sign of its disintegration.