8

This article accounts for the importance in an institution of doing group psychic work in order to think about the question of treatment. I will discuss the effects of this setting for a population of young mothers seen in a reception centre for mothers. We will see how the functions of the emissary who is the representative of the work on the psychic links that structure the psychic apparatus of the educative team constitutes an essential link in this treatment setting. I will take the example of the epistolary relationship that is created between the patient and the psychotherapist when the psychotherapist’s letter is brought to the patient by an educator who is an emissary of this function. This emissary takes part in the construction of a place and a link capable of leaving a trace and to a large extent founds the therapeutic efficacy of the psychotherapeutic work. The opening up of this peripheral space, thanks to the support of the group apparatus, will constitute a space from which the transference onto the link will occur.