Enrique Pichon Rivière's Conception of Reality in Psychoanalysis

(Accepted for publication 6 January 2017)

The author places the subject of his paper in the context of the original views of a school of Argentinian psychoanalysts that differed from traditional conceptions of man and his2 relationship with the sociocultural context - that is, with reality. These were the analysts who followed Enrique Pichon Rivière and further developed his ideas - namely, Madeleine and Willy Baranger, José Bleger, and David Liberman. The author begins his exposition with a discussion of Pichon Rivière and culture. He then offers an outline of Pichon Rivière's particular conception of man, followed by a section on the Internal Group as the nexus between the psyche and reality. Further sections address the idea of reality in the analytic situation as a dynamic field and the operative definition of the transference; the distinction between perceptual reality and the reading of reality, with a consideration of the notion of ‘critical judgement'; and lastly the issue of health and illness in terms of adaptation to reality. In addition, on the basis of a quotation from Antonio Damasio, the author draws a parallel between these psychoanalytic thinkers’ ‘psychosocial’ approach to man and the findings of contemporary neuroscience as presented by one of its paradigmatic protagonists.