Argument on the Theme

A century ago, Freud addressed the problem of groups, stating that “Group psychology is therefore concerned with the individual man as a member of a race, of a nation, of a caste, of a profession, of an institution, or as a component part of a crowd of people who have been organized into a group at some particular time for some definite purpose” (. ‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego’, SE XVIII, pp. 65-143).

This approach, from the psychology of the individual, is further developed by Bion, who, in his work with groups, adapted the psychoanalytic framework to the “group mentality”, drawing an analogy between the functioning of the individual's psychological apparatus and that of the group. Addressing the groups noted by Freud - the Church and the Army - but not only these, he describes their principles and mode of functioning from a psychological point of view (with reference to the “basic assumptions”). Moreover, he establishes a characteristic similar to the individual personality type, according to the “basic assumptions” of the group.

Starting from the proto-mentality described by Bion, where all basic assumptions are undifferentiated, in statu nascendi, and which form the matrix from which a group develops, Bleger continues in this direction, showing how one of the functions of the institution (as the organization of a group) is the containment and “silent” expression of psychotic traits that could not be integrated into the functioning of the Self. “I think they are the depositories of the psychotic part of the personality, that is, the undifferentiated and undissolved portion of primitive symbiotic bonds” (. “Psycho-analysis of the psycho-analytic frame”. Int. J. Psycho-Anal, 48:511-519).

This isolated psychotic core of the individual can be revealed and studied by analysing the individual's relationships with/in the institutionalized group, as Bleger considers the individual as the sum of his roles in the groups he belongs to: “This ‘factual self’ is