Book review: Linking, alliances, and shared space. Groups and the psychoanalyst
Kaës, R. (2007) London: The International Psychoanalytical Association. ISBM: 978-1-905888-04-7
Kaës’ work is anchored in a “typically European cultural and epistemological context” (p. xii), it says in the Preface. What is this typical European context? With curiosity, I skip several pages and read brief descriptions about the historical development of groups in France. From the individual to the subject, from the tradition of individualism over to the group as a means of freedom for thought. Ideologies, which were influenced more by Tarde and Le Bon than by Durkheim. The impact of Freud and Lacan. Kaës describes an initial rejection of the group, which was viewed as an anti-psychoanalytic object until the 1960s. Then, Bejarano, Anzieu and Pontalis proposed a psychoanalytic approach to the group. Anzieu used ideas from Bion and Foulkes. Rouchy’s notion of archaic processes and Avron’s inter-drive processes became important. These developments set the scene for Kaës’ psychoanalytic approach to groups, which concerns itself with questions of “subjectivation and intersubjectivity”. By intersubjectivity, he means the dynamic structure of the psychic space between two or several subjects. Specific processes, formations and experience, which affect the unconscious, play a part in this. Subjectivation involves a double psychic process, he writes later on. One process operates in each subject according to his internal determinants, while the other develops from an intersubjective psychic place. Subjectivation involves the notions of subject, subjection and intersubjectivity, he clarifies at the end of the book.
With memory and desire, I return to Kirshner’s Foreword. “In this new distillation of his lifetime in research on groups and families, René Kaës shows how concepts deriving from his work address important issues in contemporary psychoanalysis …” (p. xiv). What research was Kaës conducting and how?
Kaës began to study the effects of psychic ‘groupality’ (groupishness) in the organization of group processes sixty years ago. In his research, Kaës built on Freud’s ‘group psychology’ through systematic application of psychoanalytic theory in settings involving a plurality of participants. He used different group situations, such as small groups, seminars, training groups, and large groups, where he observed and interpreted un/conscious group processes. At times, this was done with co-facilitators and observers. This led him to elaborate on transferences and he introduced the concept of ‘intertransference’, the transference between psychoanalysts. Intertransferences were analysed in group situations. Doing so enables the analyst to disentangle himself from the projections and other unconscious processes. Intertransference analysis is novel and clinically useful.
Through the group psychoanalytic approach, Kaës discovered two interpsychic spaces: intersubjectivity and the subject in intersubjectivity. His experience in groups resulted in a model of shared space. Referring to Derrida’s “diffèrance” (difference), Kaës writes that there is a gap in the bond between the subjects at the point where their difference reveals that, which is neither common nor shared between them. Commonality and difference enable sharing and being shared. Kaës’ model of shared psychic space includes an intrapsychic and transpsychic, in addition to an interpsychic space.
The setting (dispositif) of the group needs a different methodology and epistemology than individual psychoanalysis. Therefore, Kaës defined seven epistemological principles of analysis for exploring the relations between the different psychic spaces in groups. Clinically relevant organizing principles include Constancy, Transversality, Complementarity, Plurifocality and Polyphony. Polyphony has a crucial role in his theory. Kaës follows Bakhtin (misspelled as “Bakhtine”) and views polyphony as a process where several voices and statements, addressed to several recipients, are heard in the group. By implication, resonance becomes important within the group.
Kaës says nothing here about Bakhtin, who introduced dialogism as a way of unmasking social languages. For Bakhtin, carnival culture communicates with official languages through inversion and negation. His concept of carnival laughter can be read as a subversive attack on the perverted culture in the Stalin era. In the carnival, phantasma replaces pragma. Bakhtin’s theory of the sign has similarities with Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology and Freudian psychoanalysis. Kaës does not explain this. Towards the middle of the book, Kaës finally elaborates on Bakhtin’s polyphony and discourse, alterity and dialogism. Kaës writes that he uses polyphony to analyse associative processes and utterances in his groups. Surprisingly, he does not refer to Bakhtin’s carnival, even though the group resembles carnival. Bakhtin describes it as a reversal of everyday life. Carnival is a space where the subjects can meet as human beings and make sense of things around them and of the conventions of previous generations. This notion would fit well with Kaës’ space. The group provides the opportunity for creativity where laughter and the breakage from established convention is possible.
Plurifocality and his idea that psychic space within the group has a number of organizing centres, rather than consisting only of one circle, is interesting. Why do group therapists assume this? Kaës relates this back to the phantasy of “the One” but without explaining what constitutes “the phantasy of the One”, other than referring to the phantasy of the group as a circle with a single attracting centre. Does “the One” refer to the ‘law of the father’? Is it like “the Other” (grand Autre) and part of the symbolic order, as in Lacan’s theory? Possibly, because phantasy follows a script, in which the subject depicts himself as taking part in the scene, but without having been assigned a place. Ironically, if the subject exists in the syntax of the phantasy sequence only, he exists in a desubjectivized form.
However, when Kaës discusses the co-constitution of the subject and the object, he refers to “the One” in the context of relations. Referring to André Green here, he says nothing else about Green, a leading voice in French psychoanalysis, who weaved into his theory parts of Lacan, Winnicott, Bion and Freud. In contrast to Lacan’s tying of subjectivity to language, Green turns to the object itself. Even between the close mother-infant connection, the father is within her mind. Kaës seems to have a similar view of the fluid complexity of the object, as Green.
But then Kaës makes a comment in passing that he uses a particular intersubjectivity, which is described in an endnote. It seems then that he draws on Rimbaud’s modern maxim where the “I is an Other”. This notion is based on the prior experience that the Other is an “I” for another “I”. The conception of otherness (alterity), which involves internal alterity, defines intersubjectivity in a less operative manner than interactionism does. This tells the reader something about the “I”, but it remains unclear what Kaës meant by “the One”. When he refers to phantasy later in the book, the reader learns that, following Pichon-Rivière, phantasy is constructed from relational experiences instead of originating from drives, as Freud thought.
Returning to Kaës’ principles of Complexity, Uncertainty and Multifactorial Indetermination, which organize his theoretical thinking about psychic spaces, I am left with a desire to know more. Groups are complex, their dynamic systems are more or less stable, and it is impossible to predict the other and more-than-one-other. What follows from these principles, Kaës states, is that subjects and the group itself are determined in interdependent multifactorial ways. He ascribes causality to this principle. It is difficult to ascertain whether it therefore should read Multifactorial “Determination” instead of “Indetermination”. Alas, semantic, syntax, grammatical and spelling errors are found throughout this book, so it is hard to know whether this is a mistake. If it is used like Heisenberg’s indeterminacy (uncertainty) principle, then the term is correct, although it seems illogical.
Be this as it may, there are noteworthy aspects in his theory. Kaës constructed a new psychoanalytic model, following in the tradition of Didier Anzieu, Foulkes, Bion, although he was also influenced by Lacan, Kojève and Lévi-Strauss, Klein and many others. Unpicking “how the individual participant deploys transference objects transmitted and received in his intersubjective history through ‘diffraction-distribution’ of transferences between members and leaders” (p. xv), proved challenging, however. Diffraction refers to an unconscious, primary process, which is particularly solicited in groups, where libidinal charges are distributed onto others. Such descriptions do not make for easy understanding. Does diffraction refer to an object-cathexis, a charging of an object with life energy? In physics, diffraction refers to the bending of light around an edge. Diffraction causes waves to change their trajectory and they disperse in a different pattern. Kaës draws on principles from (quantum) physics. Is a ‘transference diffraction’ then simply a distorted transference? This remains unclear. The author then discusses diffraction in relation to fulfilment of unconscious desires in groups, where he equates the group to the dream.
Psychic formation happens in the intrapsychic, private and individual space (egoistic dreams, wishful phantasy), the interpsychic space of the group and of linking (dream space, common shared dreams and distributive structure of the phantasy) and transpsychic space (transgenerational dream, primal phantasies). Kaës takes the reader on a complex journey in his narrative. ‘Diffraction’ of the dreamer’s ego is viewed as de-condensation, producing a multi-faceted group figuration. Concurring with Freud that the dream is the royal road to the unconscious, Kaës’ dream polyphony in the group goes further. In the group, dreamers dream for someone in the transference and of someone through projective identification.
Like Anzieu, he regards phantasy as crucial. It fulfils unconscious desires and is the structural paradigm of the first primal internal group. Kaës uses a short formula and explains how the psychic reality of the group and the group process are structured by an unconscious organizing phantasy, a schema, which consists of subject, verb and complement. For example, the parent (subject) is threatening (verb) the child (complement). Here, Kaës draws on Freud’s analysis of “A child is being beaten”. A common phantasy is linked to the primal scene, which is elucidated in chapter four, where Kaës discusses his clinical work in a group situation. Run jointly with a female co-analyst, it was bound to evoke phantasies related to the parental couple, because a group organizes itself around an imago (image) of a shared primal phantasy. Revelations of one member that a traumatic interpretation had been given to him by a previous analyst fifteen minutes before the end of the session, resulted in the “quarter of an hour” becoming a signifier for the whole group. Silences, absence, incestuous phantasies and symbolic castration were signified by the signifier, although the author does not explain signification.
Kaës writes that he proceeded like the director of the film “Rashomon”, Akiro Kurosawa, in highlighting several aspects related to this group. He provides no information on Kurosawa or the Japanese film itself. Incisively examining the nature of truth, “Rashomon” investigates the philosophy of justice. The complexity of human nature is revealed as four people recount different version of the story of a man’s death and the rape of his wife. The ontology of the film and the philosophy of Kaës’ psychoanalytic approach reveal themselves through signs. Grim, existential realities come to the fore. With its multiple contradictory flashbacks, the film aspires to present truth as an amorphous entity. “Rashomon” has had an influential film structure. The transition from words to pictures and from images to verbalizations freely disseminates its death-bringing law. Kaës’ group, like the film, oscillates between frenzy and logos. But the rationality of his interpretation is oriented towards a subjective truth and the signifier fifteen minutes carries existential dimensions of death in the transindividual reality of the group.
Kaës traces psychic reality back in time and space in his psychoanalytic model of the group. The group is formed intersubjectively through internal groups (internalizations of networks of object-relations, Complexes and an innate body ego). They form a unity to establish a whole. At the second level, the group precedes the psychic reality of the individual. Unconscious alliances form the third level. This multi-layered psychic reality is described in his group psychic apparatus. Like the individual apparatus, it is bound up with the body and formed around the superego, ego ideal, as well as libidinal, aggressive and self-destructive drives. Since a group has a transindividual reality, it is also constructed around the group leader. Homomorphic tendencies, exemplified in psychotic families, which encourage fusion/symbiosis of the individual with the group, as well as isomorphic tendencies, which introduce a creative gap between the individual and the group, come into play.
Kaës was influenced by Pichon-Rivière, who explored the relation between social structure and the configuration of the subjects’ internal world, a relation that is characterized by the link (vinculo). The subject is produced in relationships. Kaës takes on these ideas. But he goes further than just stressing the link between inner and outer reality, the subject and the group. Linking forms an important part of Kaës’ theory and is interwoven with other concepts, such as unconscious alliances (oedipal pacts, defensive alliances and offensive pacts). Phantasy resonances are pacts found between group members. In negative pacts (defensive alliances), repression, denial, rejection or splitting are observed, which are often produced by a shared defensive negation of a primal phantasy. At the beginning of the life of groups, defensive alliances are more pronounced. By analysing transferences, counter-transferences and intertransferences, analysts can gain insight into repressed material, explore unconscious alliances and overcome resistance to change.
Developing Freud’s and Lacan’s theories, Kaës suggests that the subject is not only divided from within but also divided in his relations with the other (e.g. brother, sister) and with more-than-one-other (plus d’un autre). He stresses that there is not just one other as in individual treatment, but there are several others in the group situation. He then highlights a paradox. The subject is subjected and structured in subjection. But it is because the subject has been subjected that subjectivation is possible. He refers here to the process of transformation.
The paradox of subjectivity has been debated in philosophy for centuries. Universal intersubjectivity constitutes the world and yet is also part of this constitution. It seems almost as if intersubjectivity constitutes itself, which is absurd. Kaës does not solve this paradox but instead describes subjection (structural splitting – Spaltung), stating that it is not only an internal but also transpersonal process. Subjection is unconsciously structured by a shared phantasy, such as “a child is being beaten”. This shared phantasy attracts further phantasy scenarios (e. g. father threatens the child), which has two aims. Firstly, to construct the psychic consistency of the group. Secondly, to avoid that each group member views himself as a singular subject in his secondary phantasy. Kaës focuses on both epistemological and ontological dimensions of subjectivity. Subjected to the unconscious phantasy, one group member assigned himself first to the place of victim and then, through reversal, into an executioner. It is a self-alienation, where he remains split off from the unconscious stakes of his phantasy and stays alienated in relation to the desire of the other, who in this instance, is Kaës in his function as co-analyst of the group.
Throughout this book, Kaës problematizes traditional notions of the unconscious. But he goes further, he challenges psychoanalysis by postulating that the unconscious is structured like a group. Astonishingly, whilst he mentions that Foulkes assumed that the unconscious produces specific effects on the group, Kaës does not acknowledge that Foulkes did not only speak of the unconscious in the Freudian sense, but also of a social unconscious, which includes social and communicational forces that affect interpersonal and transpersonal processes, of which people are unaware.
The question arises as to whether Kaës’ unconscious differs from that of the social unconscious. Subjection is structured by phantasies, Kaës suggests. But shared phantasies, such as the primal scene or a “child is being beaten”, arise from cultural scripts, which are passed on to future generations. Hence, subjectivation implies a process of culturation and historicization. Whilst it operates according to the subject’s internal determinants, it also includes his relations with the other and develops within the intersubjective psychic space between subjects. This means that Kaës’ unconscious must consist of the same socio-cultural, communicational arrangements as the social unconscious.
There are further similarities between Kaës and Foulkes. Kaës states that the subject transforms into an “I” (Je), who is capable of thinking about its place and condition as the subject of the unconscious. The “I” can only gain access to its reflexive organization and own subjectivity in an intersubjective ensemble (family), on which the subject is dependent and from which it has to extricate itself, without freeing itself radically, he writes. Ideas of an ’emergent I’ and extrication from the family, are similar to Foulkes’ notion of the individual, who can become the person he wants to be in the analytic group.
However, the subject cannot be equated with the individual (or self), because the subject, by definition, is embedded in relation to a verb. Therefore, unlike common concepts of the individual, a subject cannot be seen as a unified thing separate from its context. Furthermore, there are other aspects to subjection in Kaës’ theory. It implies that the subject belongs to an order, a law that constitutes him. Subjection also involves the mutual relations of the subject and the other and unconscious alliances, which form links or ties. For Kaës, unconscious alliances, which link the subject to the other and to more-than-one-other, are involved in the formation of the unconscious. They occupy a space, within the unconscious psyche of the subject, which is “ectopographical” and “extratopographical”, because they arise both in primary intersubjective ensembles (family) and secondary ensembles (groups, institutions). Unconscious alliances constitute the superego and ego ideal. But they also act as defence mechanisms to prevent the return of the repressed. Unconscious alliances are situated at nodal points of the repressed relations maintained by individual subjects and ensembles. These points are at the conjunction of intersubjectivity rather than being formed collectively. For conceptual clarity, it is useful to unpick Kaës’ apparatus further in order to distinguish it from Freud’s.
Kaës illustrates that both phoric (bearing) functions, where the group utilizes the subject for its own process, and common shared dreams, have a double topography. Here, the reader encounters Kaës’ concept of “polytopography” and “extopography”, his “third topographical apparatus”. Unconscious alliances, which operate in the service of the repressed are “meta-defences” and not just defences, Kaës states. In the group, members form unconscious alliances through associative resonance. Kaës stresses the dialogical relation between unconscious alliances. They are kept unconscious to fulfil unconscious wishes and form both the non- and the repressed unconscious. This means that they are located both within the pre-conscious and unconscious. Moreover, Kaës’ superego, ego ideal and ego are found in these unconscious spaces. This is similar to Freud’s conceptualization. However, Kaës stresses that the “I”, the mistranslation of Freud’s ego, is neither the subject nor the ego. In line with Lacan, the ego is “moi”, although Kaës only mentions this in an endnote in his last chapter. There, he also refers to the link between subjection and alienation. Self-alienation is abandonment of the identification of the ego in favor of the demands of the ego ideal. The id does not feature much in Kaës’ theory. In contrast to Freud’s “Where ‘Id was there ego shall be”, Kaës stresses that the subject becomes an ”I” (“devenir Je”) out of a “We”. Thus, Freud’s dictum is insufficient, he states.
In Kaës’ writing the reader frequently encounters Lacanian and group analytic thinking. In his “third topography”, the subject is transformed by the process of historicization, through which he comes into being as an ‘I’. Made up of the ego (moi), drives, and other psychic agencies, the subject appears to be initially a subject of the imaginary, although the author does not explain Lacanian realms. The imaginary has its roots in the mirror stage, where alienation of the ego occurs when the child first recognizes himself in the mirror and sees an image, which is an object, that he experiences as separate from himself. This creates unease. The child escapes from this primal discord into self-alienation. Exposed to the vicissitudes of history, language and other shaping forces during the subjectivization process, the subject enters the symbolic order, which involves the quest for the phallus where he moves from being it to having it. It is here that subjection (Spaltung) is inscribed by which the subject articulates himself to the logos. The phallus is a signifier in the place of the Other, the subject has access to. But this signifier is veiled as the Other’s (initially the mother) desire. It is this desire of the Other that the subject must recognize. He himself is a subject divided by the signifying subjection. Without knowing Lacan’s theory, it is difficult to grasp certain conceptualizations in Kaës’ work. However, it is not entirely clear whether Kaës follows Lacan’s notion of the imaginary and symbolic in his theory, even though French psychoanalysis dominates in his work.
Surprisingly, whilst space forms such an important part of Kaës’ model, he does not incorporate Julia Kristeva’s notion of the “chora”, a space before language exists. His theory does not seem to be influenced by the political movements in France over the past seventy years either. His Eurocentric discourse reconstructs gendered subjects, rooted in Western subjectivity. Feminist critique and thinking are almost absent in his conceptualizations, with the exception of Klein’s paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions and Castoriadis-Aulagnier’s idea of the “narcissistic contract”, which refers to the pre-verbal stage, where the mother inscribes the infant with her own narcissism. Catoriadis-Aulagnier demonstrated a perverse enactment where the subject is unconsciously bound to a fetish, which is a secret. It constitutes the foundation of a perverse contract and pleasure is the law that governs it. Kaës illustrates that the analyses of such pacts (alliances) is particularly useful in group settings.
In the Epilogue, Kaës writes that the epistemological debate he initiated situated his work beyond applied psychoanalysis. It does indeed. In Kaës’ epistemology, the subject is a speaking subject with un/conscious experiences, who is being constructed and structured by/in groups. But Kaës does not deconstruct those constructionist and structuralist forms, as Derrida does. Unlike Bakhtin’s carnival, in Kaës’ discourse neither the subject nor the unconscious break through the law of language, or the law of the father, to express social and political protest. In the group, polyphonic subjects are constrained by the signifier, for example, Kaës’ family name, which signifies the oedipal drama that was relived in the transference in the group. Group members are concerned with the primal scene, seduction and sexual phantasies. The bedroom (chambre) is the battlefield (champ de bataille). Anger and violence are related to trauma concerning the parental couple. There is no analysis of the power structure and of the wider socio-political context, religious and racial tensions related to French colonialism in Algeria, or discussions about economic hardship and political oppression.
Kaës does challenge psychoanalysis by proposing that the unconscious is structured like a group. But he does not destabilize it. The dynamic structure of his unconscious still relies on primordial phantasies and oedipal constellations. The signifying process of his unconscious poses no threat to the symbolic order of psychoanalysis.
He is right that it is necessary to revisit old epistemological problems and build a new theory. Sadly, Kaës does not fully present his in this book, making it difficult to appreciate its value. He refers the reader to previously published articles. Brief endnotes in each chapter are informative but insufficient, because crucial concepts are not elaborated. Hence, they are more tantalizing than offering a much-needed insight in Kaës’ theorizing. “Linking, alliances, and shared space” is addressed to a wider audience than that of practising group analysts, he states. However, even for group analysts, this book is not an easy read, because it requires prior knowledge of French philosophical and psychoanalytic thought, including semiotics, which concerns itself with everything that can be seen or interpreted as a sign.
Whilst Freudian thinking is further developed, and a discussion of his case studies is interesting, ultimately, it is French ‘psychoanalytic semiotics’, which echoes through Kaës’ work. The signifier ‘last quarter of an hour’ establishes itself as a symptom of several sides, Kaës writes, and analyses its signifying meaning (absence-silence-death). But without defining signifier, signified and the signifying process. Without knowing that the signifier is the sound image/marker and the signified the concept, the relationship between signifier, that is signification, cannot be understood.
Silence returns periodically and is expressed through signification. It transgresses both the group, in which it expresses itself, and the history of time and space, in which it is encountered. The repressed appears in the figurative image of the “battle-bedroom” as it returns in the group. An embodied subject, at last, albeit in form of an image. The body does not feature much in Kaës’ writing, although he incorporates Freud’s body ego and refers to bodily experiences when discussing dream-wishes and the dream naval (the mycelium, which is the spot where it reaches down into the unknown). It is in this intersubjective dream mycelium that dreams find their nourishment, the author writes. At times, his metaphorical language is almost poetic, at other times, it includes neologisms and the density is mind-blowing. Idiosyncratic psychoanalytic vocabulary from the French tradition is begging for extended exposition.
Writing and reading are dialogical, intersubjective processes, where author and reader form a symbolic pact. The reader can recognize meaning in the author’s discourse and engages with the text. Since neither writer nor reader originate discourse, because language already exists and the discourse is bound by its rules, Kaës’ discourse is not supposed to cultivate obscurity. But it does. Hence, he runs the risk of not being understood. His dense discourse from the creative to the interpretative, from the descriptive to the paradigmatic, and from intrapersonal to intersubjectivity, rests on incompatible theories. His model includes Freudian drives and a body ego. Freud’s theory is rooted in positivism. Kaës incorporates object-relation theories, which are incompatible with Freudian drive theory. Part of the subject is born out (post)-structuralist ideas. He draws on constructionism and his philosophy follows post-Hegelian dialectic thinking, although he also draws on Bakhtin, whose philosophy built on Marxist dialectics. The reader could be forgiven for perceiving Kaës’ epistemology as relativist, where everything goes.
However, it may also be called eclectic. Drawing on so many different philosophical and psychoanalytic ideas shows creativity. And Kaës developed his theory over decades. His thinking has become sharper, more succinct and elaborate since his first publication of the group apparatus in 1976. In French texts, his brilliance breaks through. The same cannot be said for this book. Readers are promised a distillation of Kaës’ work, but the book falls short on content. Disappointingly, a narrative is presented in this English translation, where polyphony is silenced, and the text is overshadowed by errors. Kaës does not deserve such sloppiness. I had to read many passages several times before a faint understanding dawned on me. This book is not easily digestible. American readers, unfamiliar with French writers, may struggle with some of Kaës’ conceptualizations, although they may enjoy his clinical descriptions and discussions of Freud’s case stories. Readers, who do have knowledge of psychoanalytic thought in France, may be able to grasp the essence of his arguments and get absorbed in the phantasized space of his group, which abolishes social space.
Susanne Vosmer
s.vosmer@googlemail.com