Di Rocco, Vincent

A Work Analysis Group: From the Familiar “Forbidden” Thought to Clinical Thought - 2011.


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This paper sheds light on the processes at work in groups analyzing practices in psychiatric services. The group is comprised of psychiatric nurses led by a clinical psychologist who works with staff in the institution. This original setting corresponds to a level of functioning meant to facilitate the establishment of clinical study in a group. The dynamics of this group indicate the stages that exist before the advent of any narration or verbal account addressed to a third person according to W.R. Bion’s model of the alpha function. The group dimension is organized around a sense of despair with therapy, which is revealed by feelings of helplessness and deadlock. The group acts as a support setting, but it is also solicited in the capacities of primary bonding using “auto” functions (autoerotism, auto-subjective play), which initiate and permit thought processes to emerge in the group from difficult or distressing therapeutic experiences.