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This article sets out to formalize a dialogue initiated during a recent colloquium between two methods of collective investigation based on psychoanalysis in relation to an intervention in a medico-social institution. The method used for this intervention is the psychodynamics of work. Different points such as the demand, the setting, defence strategies, as well as the space of deliberation and the rules, are discussed in the light of the group psychoanalytic approach. This first unprecedented discussion has the aim of laying down pointers for a more thorough debate between these two approaches which might at first appear similar on many points, but in fact prove here to be very different both from the theoretical and methodological point of view.