Didier Anzieu’s “psychic envelope”
This short article is part of the exchange of concepts between GASi and French colleagues, in our respective journals, Contexts and RPPG (Group Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review).
We will present concepts from the French current of group analysis.
In the 1970s, in France, group psychoanalysis was marked by two main authors and founders: Didier Anzieu and René Kaës. Since then many authors have developed and enriched this reflection, in relation to other currents: British (Bion), Argentinian (Pichon Rivière), in particular.
In general, the originality of Didier Anzieu and René Kaës is to base group analysis on the relationships between the individual (individual psychoanalysis), the family group, the groups, and the institutions. Each of these ensembles being marked by an interiority in relation to the socius. This positioning leads the group psychoanalyst to develop a plural listening, simultaneous, listening on several levels. This listening leads him, in practice, to distinguish between several levels of interpretation and intervention (individual, group, institutional).
We have chosen to start these exchanges logically with some of the concepts proposed by these two authors.
Here is a short presentation of Didier Anzieu’s concept of a “psychic envelope”.
Didier Anzieu (1923-1999): “The group is like an envelope”
Didier Anzieu has made extensive use of metaphors to help develop and describe the peculiarities of psychic functioning in clinical situations, the origin of his research on somatic problems, borderline pathologies and small groups.
The notion of an envelope appears in this author’s 1976 article on “the sound envelope of the Self”[1].
This metaphor therefore applies first to the individual, to the conditions required for his psychic functioning. It is a first distinction between the internal, psychic and external, social worlds. In this first representation the instance of the Self has functions of countenance, delimitation and organization of individual psychic functioning. Somehow, the Self “wraps up.”
Later, this author develops the notion of an envelope in the analysis of group functioning: “the group is like an envelope”. He then proposes the following definition:
A group is an envelope that makes individuals hold together; as long as it is not constituted, there may be a human aggregate, there is no group (1973, p.1).[2]
Bringing together several patients to treat them in small groups – material, social – is therefore not enough to form a group from a psychic point of view, an indispensable basis for implementing transformative, therapeutic processes.
What can ensure this group envelope? Who says envelope says limit, creation of an interior, an exterior, and modalities of relationship between the two. There are also different qualities of envelope, more or less protective, more or less restrictive also … Didier Anzieu over time unfolds the variations of this metaphor, for group analysis and for psychopathology. This is followed by several authors in a collective work (1987, 1990 for the English version). There is, for example, the notion of “family envelope” (André Ruffiot, Rosa Jaitin). This metaphor particularly fed the reflections on the clinic of the group and that of borderline pathologies. It has also relied heavily on psychic development, as we learn from the infant clinic (Esther Bick, in particular), or how the environment is a support for weaving the psychic envelope of the being under construction.
In the context of psychoanalysis, the interest in limits, as D. Houzel (1990, 2005) points out, has come from the expansion of the practice beyond neurosis (focused on psychic content), psychosis, autism, children and the group:
… for a long time analysts were more preoccupied with the content of the Mind than with Container (1990, 28).
This author develops in this chapter the origin of this interest in Freud’s publications. And he summarises:
The most general structural properties of the psychic envelope that we can recognize by following this route are the following: belonging, connectivity, containment. (idem)
This notion combines with that of “Me-peau” (see Ego Skin of E. Bick) to give rise to several variations of the functions of the psychic envelope highlighting, in particular, the container/content distinction.
An article by Denis Mellier will soon be presented that will develop the concept of “container function”.
References
Anzieu D. (1975) Le groupe et l’inconscient,Paris, Bordas (Dunod, 1999)
Anzieu D. (1990) Psychic Envelopes, Karnac Books, London (Ed. French “The Psychic Envelopes, Paris, Bordas, (1987), also translated in English: “A Skin for Thought” in Karnac.
Houzel D. (1990) The Concept of Psychic Envelope, in D.Anzieu Psychic Envelopes, 27-58.
Houzel D. (2005) Le concept d’enveloppe, Paris, In Press.
Le Bon G. (1895) Psychologie des Foules, Paris, PUF, 1991
Jaitin R. (2020) Écouter la filiation ; clinique et technique en thérapie familiale psychanalytique, Lyon, Chronique sociale.
Lecourt E. “Le sonore et les limites du soi”, Bulletin de Psychologie, XXXV 1, 360, 377-382.
Lecourt E. (1990) “The Musical Envelope,” in D.Anzieu Psychic Envelopes, 211-235.
Lecourt E. (2008, 2021) Introduction à l’analyse de groupe, Toulouse ERES.
Ruffiot A. 1981, La thérapie familiale psychanalytique, Paris, Dunod.
Notes
[1] We discussed this variation of the envelope in the form of the sound envelope, arguing that the primary problem of the sound experience is that of the absence of limit, and therefore of envelope. The “envelope” effect, in this context, is already the result of psychic work supported by the tactile and visual experiences of the skin. The psychosis clinic, the autism clinic, have made us aware of the problems related to the lack of sound envelope, or its failures, and the possibility offered in music therapy to help in the construction of such an envelope. Thus, in D.Anzieu’s collective work cited in reference, we preferred the term “musico-verbal envelope” arguing that, in the sound field, it is the codes of speech and music that make “envelope”, coming to compensate for this initial lack. The construction of a “sound envelope” would, in fact, be the result of an important psychic work (without material support).
[2] This formulation echoes the founder of social psychology in France, Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), “psychology of the crowds” (1895) taken up and discussed by Freud in “Psychology of the Crowds and Analysis of the Self” (1921). The notion of “psychological crowd” proposed by this author gives off two levels: the social reality of the gathering of individuals, and the psychological reality created by this gathering. He points out that the crowd is not, in this respect, the addition of individuals, but another psychological reality. Le Bon will draw from his observations the “law of the mental unity of the crowds” introducing the notion of “collective soul” (p.10).
Edith Lecourt
Professor Emeritus of the University of Paris (Paris Descartes), clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, musician and music therapist. She is a full member of the SFPPG (French Society of Psychoanalytic Group Psychotherapy), co-head of the Journal of Psychoanalytic Group Psychotherapy. She has created introductory courses in group analysis at the university and directed many theses in this field. In her clinical practice she worked 17 years in specialized family placements (children’s groups, family groups), had experiences of psychotic group therapies, cancer group patients, and numerous training groups. She participated in the creation of FAPAG, Federation of Group Analytical Psychotherapy Associations (of which she is a delegate to the EFPP). She is the author of numerous books and articles (published in a about ten languages).