Der Einzelne und die Anderen - Interdependenz und soziale Interaktion. Zu Norbert Elias' Aufsatz »Soziologie und Psychiatrie«

Individuals and the Others - Interdependency and Social Interaction. Norbert Elias' Essay »Sociology and Psychiatry« The question concerning the relation between individual and society is in the center of Norbert Elias' essay »Sociology and Psychiatry« as it is in his huge sociological oeuvre. Individual and society are not in contrast to another but are mutually conditional. For theoretical reasons Elias named the interdependency of individual and social reality "figuration". The assumption of interdependency converges with sociological approaches following Georg Simmel (e. g. symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodological conversation analysis). Both are in accordance that social reality and so therapeutic groups develop from symbolic and communicative interaction respectively. In group analysis this view underpins the construct of »matrix« which helps as orientation for the therapeutic task; conversation analysis on the other hand underpins the aim of identifying means and procedures which actors use for the interactive production of the group reality and thus the treatment of the patients implicit relational knowing.