The Art of Using Speech in the Group. Group Analysis as Rhetoric and as Dialectic[1]

Abstract

Group analysis (and psychoanalysis), although based on unconscious processes, are nο less founded on the basic principles of classical rhetoric/dialectic, such as inductive and deductive reasoning, reconciliation of opposite aspects, fundamental concepts of logic, and, above all, metaphor, that according to Aristotle derive from mental spaces of the common sense (topoi). Whether we remain in the domain of the word-metaphor (classical rhetoric) or in that of the discourse-metaphor (modern rhetoric), we testify the preeminent role the signifier (word-metaphor) plays in the metaphorical character of the analytic speech. The use of the signifier (lexis) on the metaphorical/paradigmatic/symbolic axis of language, which mainly functions as a paternal metaphor (the conductor as the signifier par excellence or Name-of-the-Father) of the signified (meaning) as expressed by the mother group, rather than the use of the signified as based on the metonymic/syntagmatic/imaginary axis of language (metonymy) and as representing the mother’s/group’s desire as the desire of the big Other (Lacan), is of great importance in group analysis, like in psychoanalysis. The members, by familiarizing with the metaphorical appeal of the conductor’s/ father’s speech, can transcend their dependency on the desire of the mother group/Other and find their personal truth and their own desire. Interestingly, in Lacan’s terms, while rhetoric/dialectic mainly expresses the Master’s discourse as grounded on a hegemonic signifier that conceals and supresses the subject’s truth, psychoanalysis and group analysis depict the Analyst’s discourse which supports a smooth, although hegemonic, signifier in accordance with the individual’s subjectivity and desire. On the other side, metaphor and reasoning can deconstruct the hegemony of both the Master’s and Analyst’s discourse and challenge Lacan’s view about an adequate metaphorization of the signified (mother, group) by the signifier (father, conductor).

Key words: rhetoric/dialectic, group analysis, metaphor, Master’s discourse, Analyst’s discourse.

[1] A version of this article was presented at the 18^th International GASi Symposium, Belgrade, 23-27 August 2023.

Aristotle’s rhetoric/dialectic and psychoanalysis/group analysis: Two intersecting routes

The investigation of the ways in which the principles of psychoanalysis and group analysis are interconnected with the basics of classical rhetoric and dialectic (in the sense of the art of persuasion) as defined by Aristotle has remained a thoroughly neglected issue from the origins of the psychoanalytic/group analytic thought to date. This is not a paradox. Aristotle’s rhetoric/dialectic has been devaluated through the centuries as mainly associated with the enchantment and the deceit of the audience following the tradition of Plato’s vehement attack on rhetoric. Plato condemned rhetoric (and dialectic seen as a means of persuasion only) by considering it as a type of flattery related to sophistry, that is as an enemy of the true (Socratic) dialectic conceived as a scale of values through which one can arrive at the supreme idea or value, which transcends even Being, i.e. the idea of the Good (agathon) (Republic 505a2, 505b1-10, 508e3, 509b6-10, 517b7-8-517c1-6, 519c9-10-519d1-2). Rhetoric, together with sophistry, cookery and hairdressing, is a “part of flattery” (kolakias morion einai tin ritorikin); therefore, it is not techne (such as legislation and justice as parts of the art of politics and medicine and gymnastics as parts of the art of body care), that only aims at the supreme good (veltiston), but simply empeiria, which produces not more than pleasure (to de aei idisto thirevetai) (Gorgias 463b1-7, 463c1-2, 464b2-8, 464c1-8, 464d1-3). In conclusion, rhetoric simulates justice like cookery simulates medicine and sophistry simulates legislation (Gorgias 465c1-3). Freud also connected dialectic with sophistry. He believed that dialectic as linked with “the maxim that strife is the father of all things” following “the Greek sophists” was over-valuated (Freud, 1916-17: 245). This is why he did not include dialectic and rhetoric (to which he makes no reference at all) between the disciplines of an ideal School of Psychoanalysis. Lacan only, later, by enriching and developing Freud’s training programme, emphatically proposed that rhetoric and dialectic (and actually in the technical sense that the latter has in Aristotle’s Topics), together with grammar and poetics, should definitely be incorporated in the teaching of psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1966a: 169).

Lacan’s view, even though it has not been as yet actualized, is entirely justified. The devaluation of rhetoric/dialectic is not but a serious misjudgement. According to Aristotle (Rhetoric Α1, 1354a1) rhetoric as an art of persuasion is equivalent to dialectic (antistrophos ti dialektiki) conceived as an argumentative art (as analysed in Topics). For the orator the important is not to persuade per se but to follow a strict methodology (in the wider sense of dialectic) leading to persuasion, i.e.to know and employ all the alternatives proposals/arguments that are available as a means of persuasion in every specific case in order to support or refute another proposal/argument (ergon), despite the fact that the goal (skopos) cannot finally be achieved. From this point of view, for Aristotle (Topics Α3, 101b5-11) the art of rhetoric/dialectic resembles the art of medicine, in which the doctor, notwithstanding the result, has previously utilized exhaustively every available measure to save the patient.

It is true that the aim of analysis is not to persuade (rhetoric) by using arguments (dialectic). Nevertheless, psychotherapy is to some extent an argumentative process in the sense described above as long as it tries to “persuade” the analysands for the benefits of being healthy. This presupposes the knowledge of all the ways of persuasion (in psychoanalytic terms: of all possible alternative interpretative approaches and interventions). Besides that, a therapeutic (individual or group) session is composed, in miniature, of three parts of which the rhetoric process is consisted, that is the orator (therapist), the topic (therapy, analysis) and the audience (patients, members). More remarkably, a session hinges upon the three means of persuasion (pistis) or elements of method that for Aristotle (Rhetoric Β2, 1356a1-28) are characteristics of the art of rhetoric, namely, the orator’s (therapist’s) subjectivity or character (ethos), the emotions of the audience (patients) (pathos) and the arguments used (logos).

But, above all, as we will see, psychoanalysis and group analysis apply, without being aware of it, the two main kinds of argumentation provided by the rhetoric/dialectic following Aristotle (Rhetoric Α2, 1356b1-6, Topics Α1,100a25-29, A12,105a10-19), i.e. inductive reasoning (epagogi) (in dialectic) or example (paradigma) (analogical reasoning) (in the rhetoric), and deductive reasoning (sillogismos) (in dialectic) or enthymeme (enthimima) (incomplete or implicit syllogism) (in rhetoric). The object of both rhetoric/dialectic and psychoanalysis/group analysis is not the investigation of the nature of things (philosophy) but the opinion people have about things, that is the exploration of what can be said about a problem as it is expressed through sentences. By using valid (not necessarily true) syllogisms (deductive or inductive) both the orator and the therapist also exploit four components each of which is present every time in a sentence and/or dialectic reasoning and on which any predication attributed to a thing or human being is based; it is about the definition (orismos), the personal (idion), the genus (genos), and the coincidental (simvevikos) (Topics Α4, 101b15-25). In any case the whole process of reasoning cannot be scientifically demonstrated; it can only be accepted following a series of mental spaces or fields of knowledge that come from common sense and everyday experience and practice which Aristotle (Topics) calls “topoi” or “stichia” (Rhetoric Α2, 1358a11-13, A2, 1358a 31-33, Β26, 1403a17). Thus, the cornerstone of reasoning is proved to be the “potential” (endechomenon) or the “potential possible” (to endechomenon pithanon ) (Rhetoric Α2, 1355b32-33). This is situated between the necessary (anagaion) and the impossible (adinaton) (Rhetoric Α2, 1357b3-6, A3, 1359a11-16), and can be true or false as long as the premises of a syllogism/proposition are valid and do not aim to deceive the recipient (audience or patient). This means that, in order to “persuade” the patient for the validity of an intervention/interpretation, psychoanalysts and group analysts use the dialectic syllogism (dialektikos sillogismos) (Topics Α1, 100a23), either inductive or deductive, in which the premises, especially the major premise, as derived from our knowledge of the unconscious, exactly like in dialectic/rhetoric of Aristotle, are not necessary (anagaion) (as the demonstrative/substantiative syllogism in science) but only probable or potential (endechomenon). As such, they don’t reveal a truth (aletheia); they simply express the common opinion (doxa) as it is accepted and believed by the ordinary people or the wiser men (endoxa) (Topics, Α1, 100a20, A1, 100b18-25). What is recommended as true by average persons (endoxon) represents the truth exclusively in the limits of the popular belief (doxa) and thus it only “resembles the true” (omion to alithi) (Rhetoric, Α1, 1355a14-15).

Last but not least, as we move from the field of syllogisms to that of the tropes, we realize that, according to Aristotle, the metaphor as the figure of speech par excellence is equivalent to reasoning. The metaphor (word-metaphor) consists in giving one thing’s name to another in a predication process which is direct, and not indirect like it happens in the simile, by inventing a latent common genus (genos) between the two terms. The metaphor is not simply an ornament, a deviation or a substitution of one word for another (or the use of the part instead of the whole like in metonymy/synecdoche) but the discovery of a similitude of genus between two terms with different marked difference (idopios diaphora). In this sense, Aristotle insists that in a successful metaphor the metaphorizing and the metaphorized should necessarily belong to the same genus (ek ton sigenon kai ton omoidon metapherin). (Rhetoric Γ2, 1405a35-38).

In the following we will explore the way in which the notion of classical metaphor is extended in Lacan’s theory, meaning that the signifier/Name of the Father metaphorizes the signified/mother’s desire and the role the metaphor (in the Aristotelian sense of emphasizing the similarity of genus), together with reasoning, plays in the deconstruction of the above Lacanian view and how at the same time it also can lead to the deconstruction of the hegemony provided both by rhetoric and psychoanalysis/group analysis. For this aim we will contrast the two kinds of discourse on which rhetoric and psychoanalysis/group analysis are founded, specifically the Master’s discourse and the Analyst’s discourse respectively, by using Lacan’s well-known aspects of the four discourses.

Beyond Aristotle: Rhetoric/Dialectic as the master’s discourse vs. the (group) analyst’s discourse

In a group-analytic group the members preponderantly follow the syntagmatic/metonymic rather than the paradigmatic/metaphoric axis of language as described by Saussure (1916), Jakobson (1953) and Lacan (1981). It is the conductor’s obligation to utilize the paradigmatic/metaphoric rather than the syntagmatic/metonymic axis which provides his/her speech with an academic authority and majesty. In terms of Lacan, the conductor/father uses mainly the paradigmatic/metaphoric axis by emphasizing the selection of the word as signifier (S) in order to confer symbolic castration to the members, so that they may avoid sliding into the interminable request of meaning involved in the signified (s) as engendered by the syntagmatic/metonymic speech of the group/mother. In this sense the conductor does not only use metaphors; rather he/she represents the metaphor itself. The signifier/conductor/father (S) metaphorizes the signified (group/mother) (s), i.e. it comes above the signified (and thus it occupies the latter’s position) following substitution, resemblance and selection according to Jakobson (1953). This is expressed by the well-known fraction of Lacan   , in which the relation of signifier/signified as presented by Saussure (1916)  is reversed: It is not that the signified (s) prevails and determines the choosing of a relevant signifier (S) on the syntagmatic/metonymic axis of language; quite the opposite, the signifier (S) defines the selection of the signified (s); and actually the signifier (S) has a strong symbolic power which relies on that it can be designated using the paradigmatic/metaphoric axis of language; in this sense it can transcend what it signifies (s) by metaphorizing it and henceforth it becomes disentangled from it and surpasses it. The signifier (S) as representing the Name-of-the-Father (the symbolic father, symbolic phallus) (Lacan, 1981) acts as a metaphor of the signified (s) which stands for the mother’s desire (conceived here as the mother’s/group’s desire) in the sense of the imaginary phallus (Lacan, 1966a, 1966b). Thus, the conductor/father protects the members (children) from asking incessantly for a meaning in the signified (s), which is linked with the need for a continuous dependency on the mother, and consequently from becoming the mother’s phallus which would potentially lead them to enter a psychotic state. The more the members use metaphors and identify with the conductor’s words as typifying the signifier par excellence and the paradigmatic/metaphoric model (Name-of-the-Father) the more they are kept away from the fusion with the mother/group which would impel them to become the mother’s/group’s phallus. On that point the conductor’s speech (metaphoric, paradigmatic) correlates with the orator’s speech, which is proved robust as long as it is built up using metaphor rather than metonymy/synecdoche. Much more, the orator (conceived as a “conductor”) also functions as a metaphor as long as he/she metaphorizes the “mother group” (his/her audience) which is inclined towards metonymy/synecdoche.

But, is the conductor’s/analyst’s discourse similar to the orator’s discourse? The convergence points and the differences of their discourse depend primarily on the way in which the leading signifier (S₁) on the symbolic/metaphoric/paradigmatic axis, namely the signifier that generates the following signifier (S₂) in the development of speech (according to Lacan a signifier is that which represents not a meaning/signified but the subject itself for another signifier) and, by extension, the S₂ as well as the subject and what Lacan calls object a are restructured and redistributed. On this basis the four discourses are developed (Lacan, 1975, 1991), that is the Master’s discourse, the Analyst’s discourse, the discourse of the University and the hysterical discourse, among which we are interested here in the Master’s discourse and the Analyst’s discourse.

The structuring of the above elements (S, s, subject, a) in the orator’s discourse, which has a great affinity with the Master’s discourse, is different from their structuring in the Analyst’s discourse, unless the latter displays, by exception, a strong leadership. As long as the analyst – at least during the earliest phases of the group or when the group needs it (Foulkes, 1964) – holds the role of a leader, he/she can direct the group using rhetoric means in the way the orator can direct the audience. One could say that here the leader’s discourse, like the orator’s discourse, represents the Master’s discourse (see Lacan’s figures 1, 2, 3) (Lacan, 1975, 1991). In this discourse the master signifier or agent or desire (S₁) (the Master, the orator, the leader) (upper left), taking an awkwardly hegemonic role, represses the truth (below left), which consists in that the subject (not the individual) is crossed through in his/her desire by an unbroken line (“trait unaire”) as carried by the articulation of the signifiers itself, i.e. by the unstoppable passage of the dominant signifier (S₁) to another signifier (S₂) which is the signifier of the knowledge. In a consistent Analyst’s discourse, as long as the S₂ (and the Other, who is mainly invoked through the S₂) is softly and immediately addressed by the S₁, the subject is fading away in the sense that it is divided ($) between his/her desire to reach enjoyment and his/her impossibility to attain it. Enjoyment is linked with the primary object/mother or a, which also functions as the cause of the subject’s desire. But this object is forever lost (symbolically dead), and its loss can only be overcompensated by the interminable search of a surplus-jouissance. However, in the Master’s discourse the S₁ addresses directly and aggressively the S₂ (upper right) with the purpose to produce knowledge (which is the real source and means of enjoyment) and truth; but, since the Other as big Other (the pre-established symbolic order, the language, the Mother, the Unknown?) can exclusively enjoy while enjoyment is forbidden for the subject, the surplus-jouissance (a) only can be produced. The surplus-jouissance functions as an overcompensation for the loss of the object a (below right), which indicates the imaginary character of the subject’s relation to the object. So, both the orator and the group conductor as leader, in the case they cultivate an imaginary relationship with their audience/group by suggesting the value of the jouissance and of an “alive” object as a means of persuasion or therapy, circumvent the potential (endechomenon) as the ideal limit of the rhetoric, and fall into the mud of the impossible (adinaton).

Figure 1

On the contrary, when the group therapist distances himself/herself from rhetoric and leadership by taking the right position of the conductor of the group, his/her discourse expresses the Analyst’s discourse. In this the position upper left is now possessed not by the hegemonic S₁, which is a position of order or commandment for technical knowledge (S₂) tending to production and capitalist overconsumption that conceals the truth of the subject as a divided subject, but by the object a itself (the cause of the divided subject’s desire). The analyst (S₁) becomes identical to a (to the mother’s loss) and invites the subject, conceived as a source of (unconscious) knowledge, in spite the fact that it is divided ($), to speak about everything comes in its mind (upper right). The divided subject ($) comes now to the surface while in the Master’s discourse it was concealed by the dominant signifier (S₁). Furthermore, in the Analyst’s discourse knowledge (S₂) is situated in the position of truth (below left) and comprises the total of the articulation of S₂, i.e. everything that we can know. Finally, the product, which holds the position of the loss (below right), is the master signifier (S₁) which now has the sense of the analyst’s interpretative work (on the latent level) through which he/she gives a meaning to the knowledge the analysand has about himself/herself (Lacan, 1991).

Nevertheless, we ought not to idealize the Analyst’s discourse. Between it and the Master’s discourse (rhetoric) there exist always an interchange and passage from one to another, which in group terms is translated onto an interplay of power between the hegemony of conductor/leader/father (symbolic) or S₁ and the hegemony of the mother group (imaginary) or S₂ conceived as the Other. Yet, the Analyst’s discourse steadily prevails over the Master’s discourse as it is based on a very clever movement: The Master’s discourse using commandment (S₁), or a week symbolic, goes directly to the search of the Other thus promoting a fragile technical knowledge (S₂), which circumvents the dynamism of the subject as divided subject ($) and brings about the prevalence of an imaginary relation to the Other (a); the Master’s (leader’s) symbolic power is thus proved to be unavoidably an imaginary one. In contrast, the Analyst’s discourse pulls the rug from under the feet of the Master’s discourse: The a itself (imaginary) or the object that has been lost for ever, as represented now by the analyst (conductor), occupies the position that the week symbolic (S₁) had in the Master’s discourse, and in this way accentuates the value of the subject ($) as a source of unconscious knowledge; furthermore, by using the wide range of knowledge (S₂), as based on the recognition that a direct approach to the Other is impossible, the conductor, although he/she coincides with the imaginary (a), arrives, paradoxically, at a strong symbolic (S₁) in which, by extension, the mother group (S₂) itself is continuously getting trained. This indicates that the proper use of the imaginary is a fundamental prerequisite for the articulation of the symbolic.

Ultimately, the most important, reasoning and metaphor, the core of classical rhetoric/dialectic, can undermine and even deconstruct the hegemony of the master signifier (S₁) in either the Master’s or the Analyst’s discourse. The metaphor, if we do not see it simply as a trope that favours reasoning but as a way that takes from and gives meaning to the linguistic context-discourse, following modern rhetoric, which is stronger than the meaning provided by metonymy, is evidenced as a weak scheme in Lacan’s fraction like in Jakobson theory (Ricoeur, 1975). By adopting a monism of the sign (semiotics), i.e. the word-metaphor in dispense of the sentence or statement-metaphor (semantics) (only combination and selection of words are recognized as characteristics of the sentence that are used by the metaphor), results to a vague resemblance and equivocation that undermine the combination and the selection: In what sense the metaphorizing (the signifier/Name-of-the-Father), i.e. a lexeme or signifier (S1), differs from the metaphorized (the signified/Mother’s desire), i.e. another lexeme or signifier (S2)? Both terms are based on the resemblance or, according to Aristotle, on a similitude of genus. Whether we consider it as a statement-metaphor or a lexeme-metaphor, the strong point of Lacan’s metaphor/fraction depends upon the semantic incompatibility (and to some extent to the semantic analogy) with the linguistic context on which a metaphor is founded. With the imperceptible imposition of the metaphorical image (which is assimilated to the use of a lexeme and has connotative rather than denotative power), as every metaphor, it breaks the isotopy of the immediate context (Ricoeur, 1975). But this does not affect or alter the blurred distinctions between the father (S₁) and mother (S₂) figures. The power of S₁ (father) could thus be attenuated by being simply presented as a variation of the S₂(mother), and the other way round, on the level of a lexeme, despite that both retain their eidopoios diafora as linked with their belonging to a different sexual genos.

On the other hand, we must seriously asses the kind of syllogisms/enthymemes on the basis of which the hegemony of S₁, in either the Master’s or the Analyst’s discourse, is constructed. In Aristotle’s terms, which are the loci (topi) that support the sovereignty/leadership of S₁? The need of larger groups and of societies in general for a leader to organize them (Freud, 1921), and apparently in the form of a deity (Bion, 1961)? or something like Aristotle’s God in the sense of the “to proton kinoun akiniton” (Metaphysics Λ8, 1073a26-27), that is sociology or even a kind of theology? In any case these syllogisms, even if they are valid, cannot but be of doubtful truth. This means that it’s our duty to investigate further the possibility that the idea of sovereignty could represent a metaphor for every purpose.

Clinical Example  [2]

This is a brief description of a session of a twice a week group-analytic group which is currently composed of seven members, three women and four men, with neurotic psychopathology, including the conductor. When I entered the group, I listened to the colour and tonality of the discussions coming from it indicating that some dynamics of power had been developed linked with the different levels of the use of speech by the members. I also noticed that the members were sitting divided in two semi-circles; on the one side the older ones and on the other people that had recently joined the group. One of the older members, John, a 40-year-old man, tradesman, with a serious obsessive compulsive disorder, talked vividly about the forthcoming political elections in Greece, and disputed with another old member, Nikos, a 35-year-old man, engineering, with mild depression. I intervened saying that I was thinking on the way in which not only politics but above all life itself is interwoven on the basis of opposites following the theory of ancient dialectic/rhetoric and the people’s effort to reconcile them, and I wondered whether some types of oppositions exist in the group. “Yes, first of all, the antithesis between old and newer members!” Nikos said. “This is exactly depicted in the way we are sitting today!” Kleopatra added, a 23-year- old woman, psychologist, who suffered from panic disorder. “The antithesis between men and women of course!” Georgia said, a 37-year-old woman who had been married recently and was pregnant as she had escaped a minor depressive episode. “We may also think on the antithesis between the discourse of the conductor and the discourse of the members” I said. “Yes, the conductor’s speech is often somewhat academic” Georgia said. “Academic, yes, but he does not command or advise!”, Kleopatra remarked. “Yes, it is more metaphoric (paternal) than metonymic (maternal)” I added reminding them the difference between the two terms that we had many times clarified and discussed in previous sessions. “Every time the conductor speaks, I feel like something has been lost for ever, like he cuts us off every enjoyment!” Maria said.

On this occasion, John stressed that the conductor’s speech awakes memories of his father academic/authoritarian speech, with the difference that his father’s speech was more narcissistic and boasting. This is the reason why, although he is very talkative before the conductor enters the room, when the conductor comes in the group, he stops to speak because he is possessed by a great fear; yet, after eight years of therapy, his fear has been moderated. The conductor said to John that the comparison of the conductor’s speech with the speech of his father is founded on that which Aristotle calls “analogical reasoning” (paradigma), which is a defective reasoning [The conductor’s and my father’s speech is academic- Every academic speech is authoritarian- Then the conductor is authoritarian like me father]. John seemed to understand the flaws of this syllogistic and agreed but asked me to clarify the terms inductive and conductive or analogical reasoning (paradigma) and incomplete reasoning (enthymeme) respectively. Nikos explained the meaning of these terms. “I understand” John said. “Yes, I agree, but it is not the only reason” Spyros added, a 25-year-old man, the youngest member of the group, who begun therapy in order to handle better the ending of a romance with a girl after seven years of relationship, “I think that our conductor is like, how to say it, like a captain!”, and he saluted me militarily with a characteristic movement of his body and his splendid humour. “You believe that this attribute is a definition of me (orismos), that I belong to the genus (genos) of the captain, or that this is a differentiating factor/ differentiator of me (idopios diafora), or maybe an accidental fact (kata simvevikos)? I asked him, and I explained the terms following Aristotle’s views. “Nothing of all these” said Spyros, “it is simply a metaphor!”. “Then, hegemony itself may also be a metaphor!” Nikos stressed. “And then the conductor himself is a metaphor!” Maria added. “Or simply a lexeme, a signifier, as Lacan would say”, I said. “And then the group is also a lexeme or signifier!” Maria said emphatically. “Yes, a lexeme in the sense of the signified as based on metonymy (the mother’s or group’s desire), while the signifier expresses a metaphor, that is the metaphorizing of the group/signified by the conductor/signifier or the Name-of-the-Father” I said. “I am not sure I understand all this but surely this relaxes me a lot!” John said. “Excellent!” I remarked. “On the other hand, a metaphor may also be a faulty scheme as based on an incomplete syllogism or enthymeme” (in this case as follows: -Everyone feels fear for a captain, -The group members have fear for the conductor, -So the conductor is (like) a captain!), I said. “How do you know all these things?” Joh asked me. “I follow the group, I learn from the group, which must be considered as one of the most important loci, to use Aristotle’s view!” I responded. “Then the group is the original hegemony!” Kleopatra intervened. “I think so; yet, both the conductor and the group share the same hegemony, they share a similar genus, the genus of gender, otherwise there could not exist an act of metaphorization between them!” I concluded.

After the above conversations the group discussion turned towards the search of a definition (orismos) of leadership or hegemony. “I think that our discussion refers essentially to the problem of leadership!” Nikos said emphatically. “You are right” I said, “I think that the fact that a subject obeys to a hegemonic principle may be rooted in theology, I do not know!”. “I am currently reading Freud, so the idea of hegemony reminds me his theory about the primordial father who only possessed all the women of the clan, which compelled his sons to assassinate him, and then to prohibit the assassination of any other father, so as the father became a symbol”, John said. “This is also a metaphor!” Nikos said. With this occasion John recalled a dream he saw before two days: “I do not know about the murder of my father but I saw a dream in which I came close to kill my wife!” (the group is laughing). “We were in a room and she begun to kiss another man. I begin to kick her and then she took the form of a box, which was like a packing, and I continue to kick the packing so as it was thrown out of the door”. Georgia said that maybe the key of the dream is the word “packing”: it implies that John’s marriage (after ten years of marriage and two children) seems to be “standardized” like a package. “This is a clever interpretation” I said, “but it is also grounded on an enthymeme. And maybe the dream itself in its construction followed such an enthymeme!” (- All boxes can be standardized in package- A marriage can be standardized- Then, a marriage is a standardized box, or the box reminds of a marriage in routine).

The group then returned to the idea of murder in a way that it was interlinked with enjoyment. “Maybe I saw this dream because I heard in the television that two young girls killed another young girl and threw her over the cliff! And I wonder how is it possible for someone to reach to such an action” John said. “Perhaps because of a sadistic enjoyment” Nikos said. Then, Maria, a 24-year-old woman who had also joined the group recently for her difficulties with the opposite sex, and was up to now silent, took the speech by referring openly to libido issues. “ I would like to share with the group my experience that in every erotic relation I can’t have an orgasm, although I enjoy sex, and at the end of our intercourse I masturbate myself without the aid of my boy”. Kleopatra revealed that she also had the same problem with the difference that her boyfriend helps her to reach an orgasm: “After he has finished, he has a bath, and then he occupies himself with me!”. “Occupies himself with you?” Georgia outbroke, “but it is like you are a package like John’s marriage!”, which made the group lough. I said to both Maria and Kleopatra (following unconsciously a kind of relevant enthymeme) that enjoyment per se is intended for the big Other only, while at the same time it can function for the subject as over-compensation for the loss/”death” of the primal maternal object in the form of surplus-jouissance; so that, if someone has difficulties to enjoy, this may result in that he/she is forced to retain a “dead” maternal object inside them; in any case we will elaborate on this in another session.

Hereby, John took the floor. He said that, although his is not a religious man, he feels a deep guilt of a religious character when he masturbates, which makes worse his obsessions. The conductor remarked that, if we see better here, we will understand that John’s guilt is depending on a deductive incomplete syllogism (enthymeme), which, as every reasoning, is only valid and not necessarily true, and that the major term of this syllogism, derives from one of that domains that Aristotle calls “topi” (here the domain of religion), which could easily be replaced by its opposite major; in this case, the subjacent syllogism is: -Masturbation is an evil that is punished and everyone who masturbates ought to feel guilt, -I masturbate, -So, I feel guilt. This syllogism could be transformed into its opposite (since in the dialectic there are always two opposite positions which could be equally accepted) by inverting the major as follows and despite that can continue to be valid: -Masturbation is not an evil and everyone who masturbates does not need to feel guilt, -I masturbate, -So, there is no need to feel guilt. John thanked the conductor for this intervention. “I am astonished by the fact that a so simple reasoning is hidden behind everything we are used to consider as a more complicated issue!” Kleopatra emphasized, and the session closed with this observation.

Final Remarks

Including classical (and modern) rhetoric/dialectic principles (as based on the Master’s discourse) in group analysis (as mainly founded on the Analyst’s discourse) has a great effect on the therapeutic evolution of the members and the group as a whole. Although it constitutes an experiential process, group-analytic psychotherapy, seen in the light of the rhetoric/dialectic, is proved to be at the same time a gnoseological event of invaluable therapeutic importance. Rhetoric/dialectic trains the members to approach their views or emotions dialectically, i.e. from two opposite sides following the common sense and to re-evaluate the specific weight of valid reasoning conceived as a mental activity which impregnates the clinical material. The group progressively learns that the group-analytic procedure develops, either verbally or non-verbally, following reasoning in the sense of deductive or deductive syllogisms according to Aristotle. Psychoanalytic interpretations or group-analytic “translations” (Foulkes, 1964), and even dreaming, can be decoded as grounded on a syllogistic process. Importantly, reasoning does not draw its authority on philosophy or science (using demonstrative syllogisms) but on the art itself of rhetoric/dialectic following a common use of deductive or inductive reasoning in which the premises are not necessarily true, that is of enthymeme or example respectively, which derive from what Aristotle considers as mental spaces (topoi). The group thus emerges as a thoughtful and simultaneously unsophisticated process, or in Aristotle’s terms as a locus, that teaches the members the prominence of thinking, which is the quintessence of the symbolic (Lacan, 1998; Bion, 1962), and the way in which wisdom can spring from common sense, i.e. the real, which, together with the imaginary, compose the three essential registers according to Lacan (1998). On the other hand, the fact that a syllogism can be valid but not necessarily true as well as that any reasoning is not but simple wording (the aspect of nominalism in Aristotle’s views, despite their discursive character) (Ricoeur, 1975) can relieve the members from being in conflict with their superego considered as the source of requiring the subject’s adherence to absolute truths entailing guilt.

Furthermore, the members are successively familiarized with the idea of hegemony as expressed by the therapist either through the Master’s (leader’s) or the Analyst’s (conductor’s) discourse, and understand the precarious foundations or loci (perhaps sociology and/or theology) on which it is established. This results in that the idea of hegemony or leadership can be simply a metaphor. On the other side, the members ascertain the value of soft hegemony as displayed by the Analyst’s/conductor’s discourse as opposed to the strong hegemony presented by the Master’s/orator’s/leader’s discourse. By assuming the role of a leading signifier S₁ (father) together with the role of the mother’s signifier (imaginary) (S₂) as “dead” object/cause of desire (object a), the group analyst escapes from the status of the syntagmatic/metonymic axis of (mother’s) speech and enters mildly the paradigmatic/metaphoric axis of (father’s) speech, i.e. of an authentic S₁. It is not by chance that Aristotle insists on the use of the metaphor conceived as the most powerful element in the rhetoric. Using the metaphor, or rather by being himself/herself the metaphor, the (group) analyst, considered as the Name-of-the-Father, that is as symbolic father or symbolic phallus or Signifier par excellence (S₁) (Lacan, 1981, 1998), metaphorizes the mother’s (or the group’s) desire for the imaginary phallus or for the child/member as an extension of it as expressed through the metonymy and the signified (s) and/or the mother/group conceived as the big Other or S₂ (the signifier which is engendered by the dominant signifier S₁). And this can really lead to a genuine analytical/rhetorical speech and the prevalence of a superb, reserved and prudent hegemonic signifier (S₁).

On the other hand, the analyst and the group become progressively aware of the fragility of Lacan’s paternal metaphor to the degree that the latter is founded on two overlapping signifiers or lexemes (S₁, S₂). If the metaphorizing lexeme (father, man, S₁) shares the same genus with the metaphorized lexeme (mother, woman, S₂), with the only exception of their idopios diafora as deriving from their different sex (Aristotle), the metaphorization of S₂ by the S₁ is flawed. This may imply that real hegemony lies in the mother/group, or S₂. Can S₁ exist without the S₂? Although second in real time as engendered by it, the created (S₂) precedes its procreator (S₁) in logical time. In this sense the group analyst/father follows the group/mother from which he/she has been helped primordially in gaining maturity, and he/she then lends his/her maturity to the mother/group as long as the group evolves. The final lesson could be that hegemony constitutes an inherent, antinomic game of difference and similitude between the two sexes/parental figures/lexemes, or between metaphor and metonymy – a fact that is in line with Lacan’s thought -, which denotes the incomparable value of the dialectic itself.

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[1]   A version of this article was presented at the 18^th International GASi Symposium, Belgrade, 23-27 August 2023.

[2]   All the group members are referred to with pseudonyms. I thank them all for giving the permission to publish their clinical material.