On the Contribution of Horizontality to Psychoanalysis: Elaborating Otherness in Groups

Under the principle of the Oedipal perspective, psychoanalysis was based on the doctor-patient relationship model and established individual therapy as the primary form of treatment. Psychoanalysis usually considers group relations secondary to the relationships between the therapist-parent and each patient-candidate. However, in recent years, an alternative to this approach has emerged. Juliet Mitchell refers to the protective removal of older children from the home to kindergarten and school. The children’s company establishes the horizontal axis in their lives. This axis eventually includes peers, colleagues, citizens, and humanity, representing a sibling relationship that has become a matrix. Group essence is based on horizontality. Like the curative power inherent in the vertical axes, the horizontal axis of sibling relations also has an inherent curative capacity. It enables the inclusion of others and otherness. Social aspects are also represented in the group through the versatile presence of different participants. Using the idea of horizontality, we proposed group supervision based on the matrix and the reverie concepts. The matrix of sharing created in the group is translated into an understanding of the therapist’s inner world. The encounter with group diversity expands the participants’ ability to contain otherness in their psychoanalytic work.