In recent discussions within our community, colleagues have been thoughtfully grappling with how psychoanalysis can remain alive, ethically grounded, and clinically meaningful in relation to our sociopolitical world. I am grateful for these exchanges and for the seriousness with which many are engaging questions about our responsibility as analysts—not only to our patients, but to the professional and institutional contexts in which we work.
What I hear emerging is a renewed interest in psychoanalytic approaches that foreground the social and institutional dimensions of psychic life—perspectives that, at times, have been less visible in our mainstream conversations. These questions feel especially timely for APsA, as we reflect on how to sustain thoughtful dialogue, tolerate difference, and remain anchored in psychoanalytic method while engaging the complexities of contemporary life.
I understand this work as calling attention to psychoanalytic approaches that foreground the social and institutional dimensions of psychic life—approaches that have sometimes been less visible in our mainstream conversations. In this regard, the work of Earl Hopper feels especially relevant. His formulation of the social unconscious—the unacknowledged social, cultural, and historical forces that shape psychic life—offers a powerful way of thinking about how groups and institutions carry meanings that no individual alone can hold. His tripartite matrix of person, group, and society provides a framework for engaging the social without abandoning psychoanalytic method. His recent death is a profound loss.
Pichon-Rivière’s work likewise reminds us that psychoanalysis has long had tools for engaging social reality. His concept of link theory and his view of the group as a site where unconscious meanings are co-constructed anticipated many contemporary discussions about relational, field, and institutional dynamics. David E. Scharff, MD, FABP, and Lea Setton, PhD—together with Ricardo Losso—have written explicitly on these questions, engaging Pichon-Rivière’s contributions in dialogue with object relations and contemporary psychoanalytic thinking.
At my institute, our educational and clinical culture is shaped by the Group Affective Model (GAM), developed by Jill Savege Scharff, MD, FABP, and David E. Scharff, MD, FABP. GAM integrates object relations theory with group analytic thinking, creating a learning environment in which we reflect upon affective and cognitive experience, individual subjectivity, and institutional dynamics. In this sense, the group becomes a shared analytic object—sometimes understood as an analytic third—within which learning and meaning-making can occur. This approach draws explicitly on Tavistock traditions, Pichon-Rivière’s link theory, and the kind of group thinking exemplified by Earl Hopper.
Psychoanalysis offers a rich and flexible body of concepts for understanding individual, group, and institutional life. What feels most important to me at this moment is deepening our collective capacity to to use them well—especially in ways that tolerate difference, sustain conflict without rupture, and support genuine dialogue within our professional communities and within APsA itself.
References:
Scharff, D. E., Losso, R. & Setton, L. (2017). Pichon Rivière's Psychoanalytic Contributions: Some Comparisons with Object Relations and Modern Developments in Psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 98, 129–143.
Scharff, J. S. & Scharff, D. E. (2017). Group Affective Learning in Training for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 98, 1619–1639.
