ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis was founded by progressively constructing a field of theoretical and practical objects from a well-identified methodological framework, namely, the individual treatment of neurotic adults. When clinical practice confronted psychoanalysts with treating psychotic and borderline adults, children and adolescents suffering from serious psychic disorders, modifications were introduced to our knowledge of the unconscious and to the treatment arrangements for these disorders. Psychoanalysis developed a methodological framework for its theoretical object, once Freud had constituted it empirically, and this framework made it possible to acquire knowledge of its organization and its processes. The group psychic space is a complex space. In this space come together and come apart formations and processes that belong to the three spaces already mentioned: the intrapsychic space, the interpsychic space, and the transpsychic space. In its defensive function, the negative pact may be compared with two other formations: the community of denial evoked by Fain and the alliance of denial introduced by Couchoud.
