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Starting from the notion of psychoanalytic “radical”, which may be said to characterise all psychoanalytic work, irrespective of the settings in which it unfolds, the author analyses the variances, invariances and covariances of the elements of the psychoanalytic radical in individual and group psychoanalytic settings. This analysis is set in tension with the social conditions of the emergence of these settings. This leads him to show how the analyst’s inner psychoanalytic disposition not only depends on the patients but also on the cultural and societal context. He shows how the foundational rule of abstinence, over and beyond the presentation of the two great founding prohibitions of social cohesion, the prohibition of incest and the prohibition of murder, hinges on a meta-prohibition: the prohibition of intrusion. This prohibition underlies the relation of human subjects to the cultural regulation of subjective, group, collective and societal ties. He stresses the importance of this understanding for working with contemporary forms of psychic suffering and for proposing relevant psychoanalytic settings for them.