This book provides, from the perspective of psychoanalysis, an exploration of identity and the unconscious and repressed effects of large social groups to obtain an effective understanding of their conflicts and actions. Day after day we witness social confrontations or we receive news of abuse and mass murders. In the face of such horror, we must ask ourselves about the origins and frameworks of irrationality in large groups in order to intervene and try to resolve these conflicts. Thanks to his great experience as a psychoanalyst and diplomatic advisor, Vamik D. Volkan integrates, from well-defined examples, the deep knowledge of the human mind in the concepts of ethnicity, ideology and religion in order to explain the psychodynamics of the unconscious of the large groups in confrontation scenarios. Both the specialized reader and anyone interested in social news in general will find in this work the keys to confront conflicts between communities and, therefore, obtain a global understanding of the contemporary political-social situation.