Meeting other languages and dialoguing with other traditions

The recent Group Analytic Symposium ‘The Languages of Groups: the power to include and exclude’ was organized to be held in 2020 in Barcelona. It was a promised meeting of different languages in groups, especially Spanish-speaking traditions. Due to the syndemic of Covid-19, we could not meet face to face, however, it successfully happened online. To me, it was a longed-for possibility of bringing to the English tradition of group analysis, some of the pioneering work in groups held in South America, opening new avenues of inquiry about other analytic oriented traditions in groups. We are aware of the power of including but also of excluding what is unknown or foreign to our well-established traditions. The narcissism of minor differences is always in charge of feeding us with more of the same, instead of including the different, the uncanny.

Group analytic psychotherapy – the name conferred on group analytic groups in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America – began with the work of the Argentinian, Swiss-born psychoanalyst and group analyst, Enrique Pichon-Riviére, in the conduction of groups with psychotic patients and nurses at Hospicio de las Mercedes in 1936. His theoretical framework was marked by a plurality of references, especially the social fields of Kurt Lewin, Marxist thinking and some of Sartre’s philosophy. Although influenced by Melanie Klein, Pichon-Rivière went beyond her theoretical framework formulating several original concepts, especially the idea of ‘vinculo’ (link)  defined ‘as a complex [relational] structure that includes a subject, an object, and their mutual dialectical interrelations with communication and learning processes’ (Pichon- Rivière, 1980, p. xi; my translation). Other concepts such as the ‘conceptual referential operative schema’ (CROS) as well as the idea of the ‘spiral process’, important today in social unconscious theory, were also fundamental contributions (Tubert-Oklander, & De Tubert, 2004; Losso, De Setton, & Scharff, 2017).

Pichon-Rivière’s epistemology postulates a pluridimensional approach of ‘man-in-situation’ and his work was in many ways akin to Foulkesian group analysis. Both authors could not conceive of a distinction between the individual and society. ‘It is an abstraction, a reductionism that we cannot accept because we carry society within us’ (Pichon- Rivière apud Tubert-Oklander, 2011, p. 61). Moreover, Pichon-Rivière’s works had always been conceived and immersed within the Argentinean socio-cultural context. In 1958, Pichon-Rivière, José Bleger, David Liberman, Edgard Rolla and others designed the Rosario Experience in Argentina, which gave origin to the theory and technique of operative groups. The endeavour might be considered a pioneering experiment in the Rosario community as a large-group setting (Penna, 2021).

León Grinberg, Marie Langer, and Emilio Rodrigué were also important leading figures. They were influenced by Kleinian tradition, Henry Ezriel and group relations, working in groups under group-as-a-whole perspectives. The trio published a pioneering book Psicoterapia del Grupo: su enfoque psicoanalítico (1957) [Group Psychotherapy: its psychoanalytic focus] fundamental in early work in groups in the South Cone.

Argentinian leadership in the psychoanalytic and group fields spread over different Latin American countries, and generations of psychoanalysts and group analysts became identified with the tradition initiated by these pioneers, especially with Pichon-Rivière’s works (Tubert-Oklander, 2011). For instance, by the end of the 1940s, Brazilian psychiatrists went to Buenos Aires for psychoanalytical training. There, they became acquainted with group work, bringing back to Brazil not only psychoanalysis but also the principles of analytic group work. The Viennese Marie Langer was a prominent figure in both fields and during the Latin American dictatorships – when group activity was restricted and prohibited in several countries – she offered support and even supervision in secrecy for groups of tortured persons in the Chilean dictatorship (Germán Morales, personal communication).

Dictatorships in Latin America (1964 -1985 in Brazil, 1966-1983 in Argentina, 1973-1985 in Uruguay and 1973-1990 in Chile) had a huge impact on analytic group work and certainly interrupted its development and flourishing during decades in several countries. The impact of these traumatic experiences – repressed, suppressed and almost in oblivion in certain countries – are yet to be told, however, they remain alive in the unconscious life of our foundation matrices (Hopper, 2003). Telling this story, at least in Brazil, is a cherished project in my writing heart.

The next generation of professionals involved with group work, but also with family therapy was influenced by Janine Puget, Isidoro Berenstein who created in Buenos Aires, spreading to other countries the Theory of Psychoanalysis of Link (Vinculo) Configurations, by exploring the multipersonal patient’s links (couple, family, group) and their unconscious structures. The Theory of Linking (Vinculares) Configurations can be understood as a psychoanalytic study of the links starting in traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. Whereas traditional psychoanalysis focuses on the intrapsychic world, the Psychoanalysis of the Linking (Vinculares) Configurations values the whole, drawing a ‘linking’ unconscious. Thus, as a structure or a network, the couple, the family, the groups and the institutions are supported by a link (Weissmann, 2011, my translation ). This Latin American development narrowed the theoretical connections between Argentinian and French psychoanalytic theory, especially through a new dimension conferred on Pichon-Rivière’ s concept of ‘vinculo’ (link). However, this approach distanced Latin American developments from British traditions, especially with regard to the close theoretical affinities between Pichon-Rivière and Foulkes.

In the last decades, French psychanalyse du groupe, through the work of René Kaës and other French group theorists, faced a huge development in Latin American countries up to the point of transforming the former influence of the British group work traditions, like Bion, Foulkes and the Tavistock Institute of Group Relations, into almost unknown theoretical approaches to younger generations.

It is impossible in this space to encompass the development of group work in Latin American countries and we are certainly not including important historical data as well as other perspectives. This task would require the collaboration of authors from other countries in creating a comprehensible panorama of the richness of Spanish-speaking traditions in Latin America, without counting the countries in Central America and  Mexico. Here it is important to register that the Latin-American Federation of Group Analytic Psychotherapies, founded in 1967 was a fundamental step for strengthening the expansion of group work in Latin America. It would also be important to explore the cross-breading and the exchanges between Latin American analytic group work and group-analytic traditions in Spain.

I hope this brief introduction has brought curiosity and a wish to create bridges and spaces for dialogue between traditions in the Group Analytic Society international. This is one of the things that this special edition of Contexts is bringing us. I am grateful to the editors for this initiative.

References

Grinberg, L., Langer, M., & Rodrigué, E. (1957). Psicoterapia del Grupo. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

Hopper, E. (2003b). Traumatic Experience in The Unconscious Life of Groups. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Losso, R., de Setton, L., & Scharff, D. (2017). The Linked Self in Psychoanalysis: The Pioneering Work of Pichon-Rivière. London: Routledge.

Mello Filho, J. (2000). Grupo e Corpo: Psicoterapia de Grupo com Pacientes Somáticos [Group and Body: Group Psychotherapy with Somatic Patients]. Porto Alegre: ArtMed.

Penna, C. (2021, in press). The Crowd: reflections from psychoanalysis and Group Analysis. London: Routledge.

Tubert-Oklander, J. (2011). Enrique Pichon-Rivière: the social unconscious in the Latin-American tradition of group analysis. In: E. Hopper & H. Weinberg (Eds.). The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies. Volume 1: Mainly Theory (pp. 45–70). London: Karnac.

Tubert-Oklander, J. & Hernández de Tubert, R. (2004). Operative groups: The Latin-American Approach to Group Analysis. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Weissmann, L. (2011). Psicanálise das configurações vinculares . Bletin Online Sedes Sapientiae.http://www.sedes.org.br/Departamentos/Psicanalise/index.php?apg=b_visor&pub=18&ordem=16

Carla Penna, PhD
drcarlapenna@gmail.com
Carla Penna, Ph.D is a psychoanalyst and group analyst in Brazil. She is a member of the Management Committee of the Group Analytic Society International. Former president of Brazilian Group Psychotherapy Association and SPAG. E.Rio.  She published the book Inconsciente Social [Social Unconscious] in Portuguese, in 2014 and is publishing in NILGA, The Crowd: Reflections from psychoanalysis and group analysis.