What makes the group an analytical device? Freud’s and Lacan’s considerations

Abstract

The objective of this article is to resume the discussion on clinical practice with groups based on the psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan, aiming at emphasizing the psychoanalyst’s ethics, its impasses and its possibilities of insertion in collective, public or institutional environments. The use of the collective is a privileged characteristic in psychosocial care and in the “expanded clinic” recommended by the Unified Health System (SUS). However, it is often seen the dilution of the innovative perspective proposed in the emergence of groups in the clinical field and the predominance of mass care, which justifies this clinical resumption. For such purpose, we present counterpoints between groupists within psychoanalysis and the Lacanian perspective on collective logic and the social bond. Then, we return to some studies of Lacanian extraction in different collective contexts and, finally, we emphasize some considerations about clinical practice, aiming at crossing the imaginary effects of the group and privileging the subject and its uniqueness.