ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis was constituted by progressively constructing a field of theoretical and clinical objects from a clearly identified methodological setting: namely, the individual treatment of neurotic adults. The unconscious, or that which Sigmund Freud calls more descriptively "unconscious psychic reality", is the constitutive hypothesis of psychoanalysis. The foundational hypothesis of psychoanalysis, the hypothesis of the unconscious and of unconscious psychic reality, has opened up few large areas of study for research into the group. Knowledge of unconscious psychic reality is only possible through a setting that is appropriate to the twofold aim of psychoanalytic work: the transformation of unconscious psychic reality and knowledge of the unconscious. The psychoanalytic approach to groups concerns psychoanalysts to the extent that the knowledge of the unconscious to which the group psychoanalytic situation gives us access offers a new understanding of the relations between the several psychic spaces.
