ABSTRACT
For psychoanalysis as it is applied in the individual treatment, free association is a-social in the sense that the social effects of enunciation and listening are suspended, leaving room solely for utterances determined by the effects of the unconscious. In the group psychoanalytic situation we are dealing with a plurality of interwoven discourses, a plurality of transferences, and the imbrication of psychic spaces with different structures. The geometrical locus of these three associative chains is formed by the parts of psychic reality that were assembled, bound, and combined between Marc, Solange, and Anne-Marie, the principal artisans of the common and shared psychic reality in the group at that moment. The consolidation of the phantasy is now assured; its internal group structure underpins other dimensions of the psychic bonding of the group members and increases the coherence of its psychic reality: for example, identifications through symptoms are reinforced.
