The question of the unconscious psychic reality and of the unconscious in plurisubjective ensembles

The problem of unconscious psychic reality and of the unconscious in plurisubjective ensembles (groups, couples, families) remains largely open; it is accessible in the specific psychoanalytical work devices, but the theoretical-clinical articulation calls for an effort to propose a model of intelligibility. The problem stumbles on important epistemological and conceptual difficulties which, for the most part, are linked to the transposition of theoretical propositions conceived within the framework of the individual cure, to devices which differ profoundly from it. Even if the basic postulates (transference, fundamental rule) are at the same time invariant but modulable in each psychoanalytical situation, it is necessary to take into consideration the psychic reality specific to such situations. In this article the author first explains how the founders of group practices have thought about this problem or not. He then proposes a brief presentation of the concepts of unconscious psychic reality and the unconscious as they have been elaborated in the context of individual treatment. Then he formulates some of his own conceptions and relaunches his interrogations on this question.

Keywords: extension of psychoanalysis, individual cure and group analysis, spaces of unconscious psychic reality, migration of concepts, third type metapsychology.

René Kaës, La questione della realtà psichica inconscia e dell’inconscio negli insiemi plurisoggettivi (2021) in "INTERAZIONI" 1/2026, pp 135-156, DOI: 10.3280/INT2026-001008