It is well known that Foulkes acknowledged Karl Mannheim as the
first to use the term ‘group analysis’. However, Mannheim’s work is
otherwise not well known. This article examines the foundations of
Mannheim’s sociological interest in groups using the Frankfurt
School (1929–1933) as a start point through to the brief correspondence
of 1945 between Mannheim and Foulkes (previously
unpublished). It is argued that there is close conjunction between
Mannheim’s and Foulkes’s revision of clinical psychoanalysis along
sociological lines. Current renderings of the Frankfurt School
tradition pay almost exclusive attention to the American connection
(Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer)
overlooking the contribution of the English connection through
the work of Mannheim and Foulkes
