30

The Angel, derived from the Greek word Angelos, which means messenger, carries within him the sources of ambivalence: having taken on the enigmatic form of an eternal child, all pink and chubby, innocent and asexual, in the pictorial culture of Christianity, the Angel, a curious messenger, has become the almost universal symbol of love. Moreover, in a group the “Angel-being”, a figure of that which is strange and of strangeness, diabolized or idealized, always represents a “letter from elsewhere”. This inexpressible message, this “letter” inscribed in the group, but which is both addressed to the group and “written” by the group, is a bearer of plural and sometimes contradictory messages: disquieting, and sometimes even terrifying messages, but also promising and optimistic ones. Drawing on a clinical example of group psychoanalytic psychotherapy, this article outlines a number of issues concerning the appearance and analytic treatment in a group setting of so-called phenomena of “angelization”.