Matrices,internal groups,and the psychic apparatus. Response to article by Clarisse Vollon and Guy Gimenez ‘A “complementarist” approach to the group as matrix and as psychic apparatus’

It has been a pleasure to read this excellent article, which tackles the difficult task of building a bridge between the thinking and practice of group analysis and the French school of psychoanalytic approach to groups initiated by Didier Anzieu and René Kaës. This they do by comparing Foulkes’s (1973) concept of the matrix with that of Kaës (1976) of the group psychic apparatus. In this, they follow Georges Devereux’s (1967) ‘complementarist’ approach and Bion’s (1970) theory of vertexes, to demonstrate that ‘the two models are neither in competition nor coextensive’ (Vollon and Gimenez, 2021), but complementary.

I fully agree with this approach. Human existence is so complex and vast that no single perspective can ever encompass all of it. Hence, all theories and points of view are partial, perspectival, and contextual, and for any given situation or state of affairs, there may be more than one valid theoretical understandings and practical approaches, which are thus fully complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.

However, this does not mean that all vertexes are equally valid or applicable, as relativist postmodern stances pose, and most certainly not that they all get the same results in practice. Theories are alternative interpretations of the experience of our relationship with the world, but they are not all equally valid: some theories are better, some are not so good, others are poor, and yet others are outright bad. There can be more than one theory that accounts satisfactorily for some aspect of a given hypercomplex situation—such as human groups—and they may well be complementary, but when we use them to orient our practice in intervening to change that situation, the results may be quite different. Hence, we are bound to either choose between them, in terms of our previous assumptions, values, and intentions, or integrate them somehow, but the product of such integration will necessarily be something new that will significantly differ from the original theories and will probably turn out to be unacceptable to the proponents of any of them.

Consequently, this kind of comparison between allegedly complementary points of view needs to explore their similarities and coincidences, on the one hand, and their differences, on the other, this being an interpretative task. And this is the job that Vollon and Gimenez have set for themselves.

They are well-equipped for this, being group conductors trained and experienced in the psychoanalytic tradition of working with groups of Anzieu and Kaës, and clearly informed about the group-analytic theory and practice. This is a much-needed endeavour, but a truly difficult one, since all our previous assumptions, values, and intentions, stemming from our Conception of the World (Weltanschauung), always underlie all our theoretical and technical choices (Tubert-Oklander, 2019; Tubert-Oklander and Hernández de Tubert, 2004). This is,

a set of assumptions about reality and existence that underlies all our experiences, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and actions, and is derived from the earliest introjections of our primary personal relations and of the social context in which they occur. It is therefore mainly unconscious, unacknowledged, and unthinkable, since we tend to take it as ‘just the way things are’. (Tubert-Oklander, 2019: 414)

And the underlying assumptions of group analysis—both in the British tradition initiated by SH Foulkes (1948, 1964, 1990) and in the Latin-American one that stems from the work of Enrique Pichon-Rivière (1970, 1979; Tubert-Oklander and Hernández-Tubert, 2004)—differ significantly from those of French psychoanalytic thinking.

This is indeed the main difference: Anzieu’s and Kaës’s approach (and that of the present writers) is truly psychoanalytic, in the Freudian sense, since it is based on and framed in the language of Freud’s metapsychology, albeit introducing some new explanatory concepts, intended to account for the structure and functioning of groups and institutions. Foulkes’s approach is group-analytic, meaning that he beholds the group and participates in it with an analytic attitude, aimed at developing an understanding of the group-analytic experience he shares with the members. Thus, he feels free to introduce all sorts of new concepts, derived from this particular experience, just as Freud devised his theories to account for the experience of bi-personal psychoanalysis. Just like him, he felt free to apply concepts imported from other disciplines but, whereas Freud relied mainly in his theorization on the concepts of natural sciences, Foulkes sought them in the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. And he only rarely resorted to the language of psychoanalytic theory. Group analysis emerged from psychoanalysis, but it is most certainly not psychoanalysis, as Foulkes (1952, 1959) emphatically stated.

This is, of course, quite different from the stance taken by those French authors who strive to enquire and understand human groups, while remaining faithful to their tradition that demands that all psychoanalytic thinking be formulated in the language of Freudian theory.

But the real difference runs much deeper than a question of terminology. The Freudian theorization took as its point of departure the primary existence of the individual subject. Consequently, it finds itself in trouble when trying to account for mutual relations or the existence of or participation in collective entities, such as groups, institutions, communities, or society, and has to explain them in terms of interactions between isolated individuals. Group analysis, as developed in Britain by SH Foulkes and in Argentina by Enrique Pichon-Rivière, starts from the assumption of the primary and essential relational and social nature of the human being, and then has to explain the emergence of the subject (the ‘I’) from the original fusion with others (Tubert-Oklander, 2019). It may be said that, for Freudian psychoanalysis, ‘in the beginning was the individual’ and all relations and collective entities and processes have to be laboriously constructed from this original state of isolation (what Freud, 1914c, called ‘primary narcissism’), while, for group analysis, ‘in the beginning was the group (family, community, society)’ and the individual subject has to emerge from his/her originally participatory existence. These contrasting assumptions correspond to two equally different conceptions of human existence and bring about quite different results, when used to orient therapeutic and group dynamic interventions.

Such differences are obvious in the comparison between the two concepts chosen by the authors to represent these two schools of analytic thought and practice: Foulkes’s (1973, Tubert-Oklander, 2017) Matrix and Kaës’s (1976) Group Psychic Apparatus (GPA). (The case is different with the concept of the Internal Group, which is used by both Kaës,1993 and Pichon-Rivière, 1971, 1979, but with quite different denotations and connotations.)

René Kaës introduced, in 1976, his concept of the Group Psychic Apparatus, in order to answer the question of, how does an assemblage of individuals become a group? Hence, ‘The group psychic apparatus is the psychic construction, common to the group members, in order to constitute a group’ (Kaës, 1993: 210, my translation). This is explicitly inspired by Freud’s (1900a) concept of an individual psychic apparatus, but it is clearly different from it, since Freud’s ‘apparatus’ is fully intrapsychic, while Kaës’s is a group formation, an intersubjective construction, which results from a work done by the members in order to become a group. However, the underlying assumptions are evident: in the beginning is the individual, with an inner space occupied by internal mental processes, which are organized in a way that is called the ‘psychic apparatus’. This term is a ‘fiction’ (theoretical construct, model, metaphor) that allows us to speak of the structural and functional organization of the individual’s mental processes (Freud) and the interactions and communications among group members (Kaës).

Metaphors are analogies that act as useful tools for thought and, as such, serve as models for the development of theories. However, there is always the risk that they may be reified—i.e., taken as a factual reality—and this breeds the dogmatism of orthodoxy.

Of a metaphor, it cannot be said that it is either true or false, but only more or less adequate to convey the pattern or relation pointed out by the underlying comparison, and either happy or unhappy, on account of its connotations. From my point of view, Freud’s (1900a) metaphor of the ‘psychic apparatus’ was accurate, since he acknowledged that it was a fiction and rigorously showed how it referred to the organization of inner mental processes, but it was an unhappy one, since it compared a living process to a mechanical one, thus highlighting its functional and structural characteristics but omitting, and even denying, its vital ones. This was a consequence of the kind of physicalist biology he had been taught in his medical studies and later applied in his biological research, and the general rejection of vitalism that prevailed in the scientific academia.

Foulkes’s metaphor of the matrix, on the other hand, may be free of these limitations. Vollon and Gimenez (2021) understand it as a theory of intersubjective communication between the group members, but this is not the case. The fact that Foulkes (1964: 292) defines the matrix as ‘the hypothetical web of communication and relationship in a given group’ seems to endorse their view, derived from their assumption that the group is constructed from the articulation of previously existent individuals. But that was not Foulkes’s (1973) idea. For him, the network that constitutes the matrix is independent from and previous to the existence of individual subjects, and the mind is not confined to the individual. This is evident in his assertion that in the group ‘it is mental processes, not persons, that interact’ (Foulkes, 1973: 228).

Foulkes (1961: 148) questions the ontological primacy of the individual. Thus, he writes, ‘Both aspects, the individual and the social one, are not only integrated in our approach, but their artificial isolation—never found in actual reality—does not arise’. Also ‘Each individual—itself an artificial, though plausible, abstraction—is basically and centrally determined, inevitably, by the world in which he lives, by the community, the group, of which he forms a part’ (Foulkes, 1948: 10). The very same point of view is found in Pichon-Rivière’s (1979) assertion that ‘One cannot think in terms of a distinction between the individual and society. It is an abstraction, a reductionism that we cannot accept’ (1979: 57, my translation).

Hence Foulkes’s (1964) conception that the group is for him a gossamer network of relations and meanings, and individuals are just the nodal points in such a network, means that neither the individual nor the group actually exist as such, but they are but aspects of a hypercomplex whole, artificially isolated by abstraction in our thinking about it. Hence, group analysis is fundamentally a holistic conception of human existence.

The matrix is a field concept that includes not only the persons that inhabit it and their mutual relations, but the whole social, cultural, historical, political, and ecological environment. Hence, in a very real sense, the matrix is not created from the interaction among the group members, but is already there, long before they even meet. This is what Foulkes (1973) meant by his concept of the Foundation Matrix, defined as the wider social matrix that pre-exists the group:

Hence, the foundation matrix is that field that is already there before the group members, including the conductor, even meet. In this, there is a confluence of all social, cultural, political, biological, ecological, and environmental factors, as in Kurt Lewin’s (1951) field theory. This concept bridges the gap between the biological and psychosocial dimensions (Scholz, 2017).

The matrix is hence conceived as a living entity that presents the essential traits of Mind: intentionality and meaning, but lacks the feeling of ‘I-ness’ that characterizes the individual subject. Collective mental processes—interpersonal and transpersonal—therefore have all the characteristics of mental life, save one: they are subjectless mental processes.

This is radically different from Kaës’s (2007) conception of Mind, that centres on the subject—the individual subject, the subject of the unconscious, and the subject of the group. Of course, Foulkes’s concept of the foundation matrix does not negate the obvious fact that, whenever several persons meet and relate in order to form a group, there is an interaction, communication, and negotiation among them that brings about a new level of the organization of the matrix—the dynamic matrix. It only holds that this process of group construction takes place over the fertile ground and context provided by the pre-existing foundation matrix that sustains, holds, determines, and pervades both the individuals and their mutual relationships.

Group analysis and Kaës’s psychoanalytic enquiry of and work with groups conceive a homology between personal, interpersonal, and group processes. For Foulkes (1973), the individual also has a matricial organization. Kaës (1976), on his part, affirms that the individual is structured like a group, thus forming an internal group.

Pichon-Rivière (1971) also speaks of the internal group, but his conception differs significantly from that of Kaës (1993), who knows well and respects Pichon-Rivière’s thought, but takes exception at it. For Kaës,

internal groups are an organization of the psychic matter ( . . . and not) the result of the internalization of relational experiences, of an interiorization of object relations and an organization of identifications (as in Pichon-Rivière). They are part of an organization inherent to (the) property of the psychic matter ( . . . of) associating and organizing as a group (my translation). (Kaës, 2007: 91)

Furthermore, Kaës’s internal group is an expression of the structural and functional subdivision of the mind in ‘parts’ that have a dynamic interaction among them and then act among the individuals that constitute the group in order to develop ‘a common and shared psychic construction (. . . This apparatus that) constitutes the psychic reality of and in the group’ (Kaës, 2007: 105, my translation), which acquires specific characteristics, different from those of the individual psychic apparatus, and influences and conforms the latter.

Pichon-Rivière’s (1971) internal group, on the other hand, corresponds to a dramatic model of mind, a scene that is acted in an inner stage by several characters constructed from the internalization of previous and present relational experiences. These characters are not representations (as in Freud) or fantasies (as in Klein), but actual living beings, with feelings, intentions, thoughts, and relations, like Ronald Fairbairn’s (1952) internal objects. They establish complex relations and interactions among them, constituting the inner group that is in an ongoing dialectic interchange with the outer group, and thought is but an expression of the dialogues that take place in it.

Obviously, Kaës’s approach, derived from the assumption of the primacy of the intrapsychic, is essentially projective, as in Freud and Klein, while Pichon-Rivière’s is mainly introjective, although both authors emphasize the dialectic between the inner and outer worlds.

Consequently, these two views may be considered complementary, although, as I have previously said, they bring about quite different results when used as the basis of group work. Kaës’s psychoanalytic work with groups focuses on the effects of the individuals’ internal processes on their interactions and the construction, organization, and functioning of the group, as well as on the way the latter reflects on the individual’s inner processes and behaviour. Group analysis, as derived from the work of Foulkes and Pichon-Rivière, on the other hand, highlights the ubiquitous presence and influence—on the intra-personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal processes that take place in the group and its members—of the social, cultural, political, ecological, and environmental context.

This difference is apparent in Vollon and Gimenez’s clinical example. This is a session from a group of supervision in a youth centre in the south of France, conducted on psychoanalytic lines based on free association and role playing by the members. The supervisor’s interventions were twofold: reminding the members of the contract and interpreting the prevalent anxieties.

This intervention and its subsequent analysis are clearly psychoanalytic, not group-analytic. There is no reference to either the interaction among the members nor to the wider social and political context, in spite of having quite a few elements that point in that direction (the young patients referred to in the supervision are clearly foreigners, dependant on social benefits, with manifest conflicts with authority, both the government’s and the therapists’, and come from different cultures). The session was marked by the unexplained and unexcused absence of Muriel, the manager who coordinated the youth centre, and the supervisor points this out, but only as an emotional state of orphanhood and understands it in psychoanalytic terms. There is no attempt to consider and address the power relations between Muriel and the group, the patients and the therapists, the institution, and the French government and culture, or the group members and the supervisor. The authors’ analysis centres on the individual intrapsychic dynamics explored by psychoanalysis, and their theoretical understanding of the group is not framed in terms of interpretation of meanings, but of functional causal explanations like ‘the group’s chain of associations had become saturated, and this situation was maintained by the overstimulation of the communication networks’ (Vollon and Gimenez, 2021).

This is not to say that their work with the group is not useful or productive, but that it is quite different from what a group analyst would do and think, and that it aims in another direction. In this, of course, I stick to our tradition, which I deem to be valuable. But I thank the authors for having provided this opportunity to discuss and better understand their tradition, which is also a valuable one. It is only by means of a respectful dialogue, exploring our coincidences and divergencies, that our profession will find a way to develop along new lines, instead of mechanically repeating what we have inherited from our forefathers.