Pharmakós and Epistemic Colonization in Group Analytic Training

“The colonization of each other’s minds is the price we pay for thought.”

Mary Douglas

British anthropologist

Introduction

This year’s Group Analysis Symposium adopts the theme Pharmakós, drawn from ancient Greek mythology, where the term signifies both remedy and poison, transformation and destruction. Although I am unable to attend the Symposium and participate directly in its exchanges, I felt compelled to contribute to this thoughtfully chosen theme, particularly in relation to its powerful metaphor of something that is simultaneously harmful and beneficial.

In this short paper, I aim to explore the notion of Pharmakós at the very core of group analytic formation, examining how these processes may embody both growth and harmful dimensions, contained in the question: how can we conceptualize the harmful or “poisonous” aspects involved in training candidates to become group analysts?

Reflecting on my own experience, I found a sense of recognition and reassurance in two significant papers: Otto Kernberg’s (1996) “Thirty Methods to Destroy the Creativity of Psychoanalytic Candidates” and Farhad Dalal’s (2017) “The Analytic and the Relational”. These texts helped to mitigate feelings of isolation and even paranoia, offering conceptual tools to understand certain troubling aspects I encountered, experiences that, I believe, are not uncommon among candidates within analytic institutional settings.

I believe this as a central issue that resonates strongly with this year’s theme: the idea that the group can simultaneously function as a force for transformation, creativity, and renewal but also exclusion, stigma, or oppression. In this context, my focus is on institutionalized or established groups, such as training societies where candidates are formed, as a privileged place where this duality becomes particularly problematic to potential damage. One of the strongest reasons is that these institutions are often sought as spaces of safety, belonging, and professional development, analogous, in some respects, to the idea of a extended family. Yet, they may also become settings of unpredictability, insecurity, or even symbolic violence, evoking an experience akin to a “Russian roulette,” where support and harm coexist in unstable tension. In this sense, such environments may inadvertently reproduce the very dynamics of injury they are meant to transform.

Lived Experience

In December of 2020, during an open session, accessible to all members with clinical practice, I presented a clinical work with a certain specificity. During one of the group sessions, a patient named Anita presented me with a gift wrapped in paper. Anita divulged that she had held onto the present for quite some time before finally giving it to me. At that moment, I refrained from opening the gift, believing that the element of surprise would probably promote a perplexed state of mind that could potentially destabilize the session. Instead, I opted to address this gesture in the following session, after reflecting on and acknowledging the contents of the gift, informing the group of the decision, and conveyed that it would be divulged the contents of the gift, providing them with the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings on the matter, in the next session. Later, I opened the gift in solitude, revealing a pink painting depicting a head with a labyrinth situated at the top, within which lies a small green figure. I interpreted Anita’s gesture as a request for containment, comprehension, and remembrance.

During my communication in the open session to the gathered group of the institution, this event was dissected and judged as incorrect action. It was suggested that I breached the analytic setting by addressing the offer with a non-analytic approach. The audience analysis goes further, and it was transmitted that my approach could provoke the emergence of envious and aggressive aspects of the analytic group. The mode of expression of these messages appeared to me to be a bad augury. I felt that I committed a kind of crime or heretical act and that will evoke some kind of punishment by unknown forces released from the group’s unconscious. My non-analytic approach would lead to severe consequences. I was invaded by an experience of shame and fear that made me struggle with a terrible fear of endangering my entire practice.

I decided to reflect upon all these events and started a search for what could justify what happened. I believe that could help to process this experience of invalidation, as well as expanding the knowledge about clinical practice. I remember Otto Kernberg´s 1996 article about the destruction of creativity of psychoanalytic candidates but it was in Farhad Dalal’s (2017) article that I found a sense of solace and reconciliation as well as opening a space to think about what happened:

“A few years ago, I slowly started to become aware that my practice as a therapist had changed quite a lot. I started to become conscious of a growing difference with some colleagues and the conventions that they took as unquestioned given. (…) I was a bit embarrassed about my diverging and divergent form of practice and kept it to myself for some time. I was pretty sure that I would be judged as having become casual and careless, of having become slack and lazy, of having lost my analytic way. Indeed, to some degree I thought this too, that I was getting away with something shameful under the cover of darkness.”

Farhad Dalal’s (2017)

I feel a deep sense of gratitude for this testimony, particularly for its honest recognition that analysts, too, can experience fear and shame.

Epistemic colonization

This shared experience opened the possibility to move back to my own experience of being heretical or dangerous concerning being devoted to a paradigm. So, this essay is a consequence of the exploration of those feelings of heresy. For that I propose to study the epistemic legitimacy of concepts and discourses, which inform clinical aspects, with particular emphasis on the transformation of ideas into dogmas and ideologies or doing some applied epistemology by using critical thinking (Battersby,1989).

The properties of dogma and ideology, namely their claim to truth and universality, infiltrate the conceptual and colonize our minds more likely than we might imagine. The colonizer uses the desirable epistemic mandate of truth and universality to subjugate the colonized, thereby perpetuating epistemic colonization.

As a comprehensive phenomenon, coloniality permeates all aspects of power, including sexual access, collective authority, work, subjectivity/intersubjectivity, and knowledge production from intersubjective relationships (Lugones, 2007).

Beyond the conventional colonization of territories and cultural habits that we typically associate with power dynamics, there is another type that is underexplored: epistemological colonization. This type of colonization subjugates and erases otherness within its subjectivity, spreading through languages in its discursive and conceptual forms (Ravishankar, 2020). In many cases, those who perpetrate colonization are unaware of the nature and harmful consequences of their actions. Furthermore, they are often unaware that their own minds have been colonized by others, many times as unconscious use of a child’s mind to store unprocessed trauma from an earlier generation (Silverman, 2015), erasing the trauma by occupying the place of an epistemic authority to those they colonize. This leads to the overvaluing of some sources of epistemic authority and the devaluing of others, as well as overt and covert forms of discrimination and the use of rewards or punishments (Dascal, unknown).

As a countermeasure to this posture, we subscribe to the renowned Socratic adage “I merely acknowledge that I possess no knowledge”, which posits that the acceptance of one’s lack of knowledge serves as the genesis of sagacity. Rather than embracing a dogmatic conveyance of doctrine (which is focused solely on preserving the bona fide tradition), we embrace a critical tradition of doctrine. Therefore, the critical nature of argumentation asserts that formulated theories are not dogmatic since they are not presented as absolute and irrefutable truths; rather, they are subjected to discussion, which engenders divergence and discordance, and allows for alternative formulations and proposals, as they are constructs of human cognition, ideas, and not revelations of a divine or supernatural nature, are perpetually open to discussion, reformulation, and correction.

The role of the analyst is not to disseminate preconceived and finalized knowledge, but to facilitate the generation of original ideas by their interlocutor through dialectics, conversational exchange, and dialogue, as elucidated in the old Plato’s Theaetetus (149a-150c).

The epistemic position of the analyst

“What I am calling the classical analytic attitude, is the one in which the analyst is thought to be a detached objective observer of clinical phenomena. The primary purpose of the analysis is the disinterested scientific pursuit of truth. (…) The sort of truth that I am alluding to in the phrase ‘true in the moment’ makes no claim to objectivity; nor does it have much to do with the sort of scientific truth that classical analysts imagine that their interpretations are revealing. The way I am using the term true has more to do with notions of authenticity and sincerity.”

Dahal

I have a considerable interest in the epistemic issues of psychoanalysis and group analysis and its longstanding history. The inquiry initially began with the examination of the relationship between the individual and the group, and the various ways in which this association can be either relational or non-relational. The concept of Kafkaesque groups (Lobo, 2015) was my first foray into this theme. The article addressed the issue of fictitious groups, a type of group where individuals with pathological narcissism, lacking any libidinal connection (Freud,1921), mobilizing together means of obtaining recognition and benefits. The outcome of such groups is a decrease in the autonomy, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity of the individuals involved, as can be observed in cult groups. In such groups, is hard to accept there’s relationality or intersubjectivity. However, we believe this is not a sufficiently studied issue in group analysis, principally epistemic colonization.

We maintain that a proper framework is necessary to avoid dogmatic thinking or colonization of minds. If we accept quickly the idea that intersubjectivity occurs in the collective, we misunderstand for example a totalitarian matrix. Omnipotent features found in groups that serve totalitarian purposes cannot be considered intersubjective matrices as there is no subjectivity to be found in such groups. Bion´s (1961) description about the three basic assumptions: dependence; fight-flight, and pairing is very important to understand this lack of thinking, and we recognize the importance of this theorical approach but are not going through this path, not today. We want to focus on historical and contextual features that conditions the psychoanalysis and group analysis openness to knowledge. These conditions are many times out of consciousness and can only be seen after contextual changes.

I argue that it’s possible to observe the paradigmatic example for epistemic colonization in in Freud’s initial seduction theory that served as a generative conceptual framework, with the impact of real-world events at the core of mental disorders. However, at the time, it was historically impossible to block the pervasive disease of sexual abuse that has long plagued society. This issue could not have been addressed for several reasons not investigated here. Contemporary the reality of sexual abuse is slowly gaining recognition as a profound and serious problem. Freud’s discovery of unconscious drives and phantasies was an exceptional resolution to the obstruction to address the sexual abuse problem. His approach was undoubtedly real and significant, and psychoanalysis has explored it with great fertility. Yet, these drives and phantasies only account for half of the causes of mental disorders. The real world has an impact, and this is now well-known.

In Freud’s time, the positivist stance was fundamental to the survival of his theory. That was the epistemic position validated by the scientific community. So, the analyst must adhere to an “analytic” norm that requires being opaque and detached, without a subjective position, or in another words: scientific. That is why countertransference from the analyst was undesirable. This was necessary to prove a point: that therapy could be based on scientific theory and could move away from religious and mystical forms of cure. This stance is clear in the conflict between Freud and Jung and other figures who were further removed from a positivist approach. The rationalism of the psychoanalytic paradigm was tremendously beneficial to gain legitimacy. However, this epistemic position is also harmful because it created dogmas. The risk is not simply that dogma limits flexibility; it reshapes the entire epistemic and affective field in which analytic candidates think, feel, and become analysts. When an epistemic position is treated as settled truth rather than a provisional framework, it ceases to function as a tool and becomes an organizing authority that demands compliance.

Why dogma becomes “poison”

First, dogmatic epistemic positions foreclose thinking. In a training context, candidates are not only learning techniques but also internalizing ways of knowing. When one model is elevated to unquestionable status, alternative formulations are not metabolized but excluded. This produces what Bion (1959) might describe as an attack on linking: the candidate learns, often implicitly, that certain associations, intuitions, or clinical responses are illegitimate. Over time, this constrains symbolic capacity and inhibits the emergence of original clinical thought.

Second, dogma reorganizes authority relations. The analyst-as-knower and candidate-as-not-knower configuration becomes rigidified, transforming epistemic asymmetry into epistemic hierarchy. This creates conditions for epistemic submission rather than epistemic trust. The candidate’s uncertainty, an essential condition for analytic work, is no longer held as generative but experienced as dangerous. In the presented vignette, the audience response did not open inquiry into the meaning of the gift; instead, it positioned your act within a pre-coded system of correctness. The effect was not clarification but shame, which is a powerful regulator of conformity.

Third, dogmatic systems tend toward epistemic colonization. Concepts presented as universal truths obscure their historical and contextual contingency. As a result, candidates may internalize not only theories but also the authority structures embedded within them. This colonization operates subtly: it shapes what can be thought, said, or even perceived as clinically relevant. Alternative epistemologies, relational, contextual, embodied, are either assimilated into the dominant framework or dismissed. In this way, the institution reproduces itself by narrowing the field of possible subjectivities within it.

Fourth, dogma transforms the group into a site of potential symbolic violence. Training institutions are often idealized as containing and developmental spaces. However, when dogma governs evaluation, difference is easily reconfigured as error or deviance. The candidate may then experience the group not as a matrix of intersubjectivity but as a tribunal. The “Russian roulette” quality that is described captures this: recognition and annihilation coexist unpredictably, depending on alignment with the implicit orthodoxy. This unpredictability intensifies dependency and inhibits dissent.

Fifth, dogmatic epistemic positions paradoxically undermine the analytic stance itself. If analysis is grounded in openness to the unconscious, to multiplicity, and to the co-construction of meaning, then rigid adherence to predefined truths contradicts its own foundations. Dalal’s distinction between “objective truth” and “truth in the moment” is crucial here: dogma privileges the former at the expense of the latter, thereby sacrificing authenticity for correctness.

Open conclusion

If the Pharmakós names that which both heals and harms, then analytic training institutions must be understood as inherently ambivalent structures: they transmit indispensable knowledge while simultaneously risking the foreclosure of thought through dogmatization. The problem is not the existence of theoretical frameworks or standards, but their reification into unquestionable truths that regulate belonging and legitimacy.

Future work could deepen this line of inquiry in several directions: qualitative studies of candidates lived experiences of epistemic authority, shame, and creativity within training contexts; conceptual clarification of “epistemic colonization” in psychoanalytic and group analytic settings, potentially integrating perspectives from critical theory and decolonial thought; investigation of institutional practices that foster epistemic plurality without collapsing into relativism, how to sustain rigor while preserving openness or exploration of the relationship between epistemic stance and clinical outcomes, particularly whether more pluralistic and reflexive frameworks enhance therapeutic responsiveness.

Such inquiries would not aim to dismantle analytic traditions but to render them more self-reflective, permeable, and alive to their own conditions of possibility. In this sense, the task is not to eliminate the Pharmakós, but to remain aware of its dual nature, so that what is intended as remedy does not silently become poison.

References

Battersby, M. (1989). Critical Thinking as Applied Epistemology: Relocating Critical Thinking in the Philosophical Landscape. Informal Logic, 11(2).

Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in groups, and other papers. London: Tavistock Publications.

Bion, W. R. (1959). Attacks on linking. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 40, 308–315

Dalal, F. (2017). The Analytic and the Relational: Inquiring into Practice. Group Analysis 50(2)

Dascal, M (unknown) Colonizing and decolonizing minds https://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/philos/dascal/papers/Colonizing%20and%20decolonizing%20minds.doc

FREUD, S. (1921). Psicologia das massas e análise do ego. In: FREUD, S. Edição standard brasileira das obras psicológicas completas de Sigmund Freud. v. 18. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1990, p. 89-179.

Greenberg, J. R., & Mitchell, S. A. (1983). Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Kernberg OF. Thirty methods to destroy the creativity of psychoanalytic candidates. Int J Psychoanal. 1996 Oct;77 (Pt 5):1031-40. PMID: 8933224.

Lobo, R. (2015) The Kafkaesque Group, Group Analysis 48(1 Suppl):10-15

Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System. Hypatia Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 186-209

Musser, G. (2015). Is the Cosmos Random? Scientific American, September, 88-93.

Plato (149a-150c). Téétète. GF- Flammarion. Paris, 1967.

Ravishankar, A. (2020). Linguistic Imperialism: Colonial Violence through Language. The Trinity Papers

Silverman, S. (2015) The Colonized Mind: Gender, Trauma, and Mentalization, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 25:1, 51-66

Rita Sousa Lobo

Clinical Psychologist and Philosopher

Full Member of GASi