Enrique Pichon-Rivière: the social unconscious in the Latin-American tradition of group analysis

• Published in: The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies Vol. 1; pp. 45 - 67
• Main Author: Tubert-Oklander, Juan
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2011
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Modern Latin American Literature; Mature Object Relations; Punta Del Este; SCT; Autistic Contiguous Position; Argentinean Politics; Contemporary Society; North Eastern Argentina; LHS; Group Analyst; Fascist Military Control; Ruthless Pragmatism; Primary Object Relations; Independent School; Deepest Mental Level; Social Unconscious; Fluid Interchange; Group Analytic Situation; Indissoluble Unit; Latin American Tradition; Neapolitan Musician; Social Dreaming Matrix; Infamous Decade; Obligatory Vote; Group Unconscious Fantasy
• ISBN: 1855757680; 9781855757684
• DOI: 10.4324/9780429483233-3

The Argentine psychoanalyst and group analyst Enrique Pichon-Riviere was born in Geneva, in 1907. There has been an independent school of group-analytic thinking and practice originating in the work of Enrique Pichon-Riviere, since the late nineteen-thirties, in Buenos Aires. The social unconscious was very much present in Pichon-Riviere’s writings, even though he never used the term. Pichon-Riviere focused on this spokesman function, both in clinical settings–individual psychoanalysis and group analysis–and in his critical analyses of art products and activities, features and routines of everyday life, and current social events. This chapter discusses the concepts developed by Pichon-Riviere, and follow with those posed by his disciples and continuators–including myself–which represent the Latin-American tradition he initiated. It explains Jose Bleger’s and Blanca Montevechio’s ideas, by adding a fourth, post-Oedipal organization, consisting in the dialectic interaction of the three previous organizations, which gives birth to the mature human subject.