Comment on the paper by Claudine Vivier Vacheret: The subject and the group-Introduction

A Foulkesian perspective puts the focus on the group matrix, on the group as a whole as a web of communications created by the members of a group. Every group is unique. The group as a whole share a foundation matrix and develops a dynamic matrix.

Vacheret refers to Anzieu/Kaes concept of the group psychic apparatus with different organisers.

What are the similarities and differences between Foulkes’ concept of the matrix and Kaes concept of the group psychic apparatus?

Foulkes describes the foundation matrix as the common ground which is shared by all members of the group: Language, History, Values, Culture etc.

The dynamic matrix develops through the dynamic of a unique web of communications in a specific and unique group. Group analysis is the analysis of the whole group process by the group on five levels:

1. the current level: communities, societies , public opinions of the actual members.
2.the transference level: mature object relations, family, father, mother, siblings etc
3.the projective level: primitive, narcissistic, inner object relations
4.parts of the self represented by others
5. parts of the body represented by others (Foulkes Therapeutic Group Analysis, 1964, p 115)

With these different levels of the matrix, Foulkes describes a dynamic process which changes with every communication within the group and with other social groups. Therefore, the inner group process of each member changes with every communication. The individual is perceived as a nodal point in the network of group communications.

This is the main difference to Kaes Group Psychic Apparatus.

Kaes describes the functioning of a group and of the subject according to Freud’s apparatus of the conscious and unconscious psyche. Subject and Group have in common „a psychic and unconscious organisation… as group psychic organisers and…socio-cultural organisers“(cf Vacheret).

The main difference is therefore the understanding of the group process as an apparatus of organisers versus a dynamic network or web of communications (matrix).

The advantage in Foulkes’ perspective is the notion of a dynamic, ever changing and developing process of the group and their individual members. Through conscious and unconscious communications within and between groups the group and its members change as open and ever changing systems.

The advantages of Kaes seems to me his clear description of organisers: first, the phantasmatic of the body,

Second, the phantasmatic of original fantasies of seduction, castration and the primitive scene

Third, the family complex, and

fourth the subjective psychic apparatus i.e. “the capacity of the subject as much as the group itself to represent itself as having its own psychic life and reality“ (Vacheret)

These organisers are very similar to the levels of communications described by Foulkes (see above).

Kaes organisers lead to three positions: ideological, utopian and mytheopoetic, which describe the relationship between the subject and the group and the relationship of the subject to the ideological, utopian or mythopoetic object. This opens a view on political dimensions: dictatorship, utopia and creativity.

Foulkes restricts himself to a democratic process of interactions and communications within and between groups.

References

Foukes, H. (1964): Therapeutic Group Analysis
Knauss, W.  (2005): Group Psychotherapy in: Gabbaard, Beck, Holmes(2005): Oxford Textbook of Psychotherapy, pp:35-45)
Vacheret, V. (2021): The Subject and the Group-Introduction

Dipl.Psych, Werner Knauss
knuellermaus@t-online.de
27.11.2021