EscherIstituzioni

A reader’s guide

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What does it mean to think about institutions? What is the relationship between functions of thought and institutions? In this special issue, we aim at developing possible answers to these questions.
The real functioning of institutions is a complex phenomenon because it is a human one: it is rooted in the boundaries that people meet when they think, in the emotions that they feel at work, in the needs that they satisfy when they imagine.
The institution is an ensemble of rules, a physical place, a matrix of symbols, but most of all a meeting point of people and their mental representations. Within it, both individual and collective desires, ways of feeling and emotions mingle together. The institution is thus a complex and multidimensional structure in which personal thought and collective logic interact, each with their specificities and criticalities.
The outcome of this interaction is neither pre-determined nor inevitable. In the various contributions of this issue, we reflect on how it can be creative, by containing parasitical and persecutory aspects and opening a space for integration of different, not always convergent, perspectives. Read more

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Ouverture. Institutions and thoughts toward a creative interchange

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Abstract

In this text I discuss the relationship between institutions and the mind as it has been developed in the socio-economic literature and in the psychoanalityc literature of Bionian matrix. Moreover, I identify “thinkability” as the complementary background of this monothematic volume of Funzione Gamma Read more

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The necessary institution

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Abstract

The institution which works well is the institution we become aware of only when it fails, like the air we breathe, so necessary but so little present to our conscience. Some psychoanalysts, in particular Bleger and Kaës, have theorized about this condition which is necessary for the psychic life of the individual in groups and of groups themselves. Both theorizations entail a further narcissistic injury, the fourth one, after the ones inflicted by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, to a concept of the human subject as master of the universe.  The ego becomes such in the group and from the group. The institution is a necessary vital organization: the first one is the body itself in its synergetic and silent functioning that, when everything goes well, allows the subject to sleep with the freedom of dreaming. Other institutions are the developmental environment in which the child can grow up, and the social organization where he/she can have the freedom to play, love, work, and think.
Which institution? Certainly not an institution that demands to discipline our dreams and behaviour, but an institution that allows us to live as one and many, as a singular plural. It is not utopia, but a need that nevertheless requires working through a narcissistic injury in order not to transform the institution into a disciplinary apparatus  that pushes the narcissism of one subject to annihilate the narcissism of the other, even though it appears with new features that are only apparently plural. Read more

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On the threshold. The invention of institutions as a turning point for change

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Abstract

In the paper I address three questions that seem useful to understand our relationship with institutions and its potentialities.

a) How can the relationship with institutions be creative?
b) How can the external world not to be also a foreign one for us?
c) Which is our role in the process of institutional change?

In my view Winnicott gives us important instruments to articulate these questions further and connect them with each other. In particular, I will take the concept of primary creativity and the differentiation process between me and not-me into consideration. Read more

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From the organization-in-the-mind to the organization as subject: conceptual maps for psychoanalytic consultancy in institutions

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Abstract

Organizational consultancy has been using methods and approaches of psychoanalytic origin for several decades now, especially when the problems involved seem to imply significant emotional and inter-personal aspects, that leaders, key figures and often the involved subjects themselves appear mostly unaware of or visibly unwilling to know.
A considerable amount of literature is now available so that those who are interested in this subject can study it in further depth in its various aspects and its multiple applications. The aim of this article is rather an attempt to better specify the “object” of these professional practises, providing some conceptual maps and tools for guidance that can help consultants (but managers as well) from an analytical or psychotherapeutic background not to get lost in a mare magnum of theories and techniques where a number of specific risks are present alongside questionable improvisations and  methodologies for every season. I am not referring so much to the various possible forms of narcissistic seduction or omnipotent vocations which can drag a consultant into disaster or into perverse collusion with a client, but rather to the danger of losing sight of the object of one’s own work, simplifying its complex nature, dealing more with the people than the processes (or vice versa), reifying the organization or anthropomorphizing it, losing the capacity to distinguish between fantasy and concrete reality; all this is a setting which  the consultant Read more

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Why “¿Authority?” Observations on the Authority/Power Continuum

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Abstract

The title of this work refers to the title chosen by the EPF (European Psychoanalytical Federation) for their congress in Berlin in March 2016 (¿Authority?) and references the themes that were chosen by Serge Frisch, Laurence Kahn and Leopoldo Bleger for a seminar they organised, also in Berlin, in September 2014 (Psychoanalysis in 2025). The questions that underlie these initiatives are numerous. Given the scope of this text, I’ll limit myself to pointing out the question that seems to me the most interesting: what can psychoanalysis offer for the understanding of a topic of such great social relevance as authority?
The following work begins with a series of two hypotheses.
The first assumes that authority and power are not substantially dissimilar manifestations, but constitute the poles of an unbreakable continuum. It is difficult to come across an authority entirely devoid of power, just as it is rare for the power of a subject, group or institution not to come with a certain amount of authority (of course, these terms require precise definitions that will be discussed in the next section).
The second hypothesis postulates that the problem of authority, despite being rarely discussed directly in psychoanalysis, is variously reformulated in several conceptual models that develop essential aspects of psychoanalytic theory and technique (it refers, as we shall see, the effects of the conflict between generations and the development of the Oedipus complex on psychic functioning: the formation of the super-ego and his ordinary and extraordinary maintenance).

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Thinking the Institution

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Abstract

This essay focuses on three topics. The first is related to a particular aspect of the relationship between individuals and the institution. The institution may or may not provide the individual with an image (mirroring) suited to for his/her needs and responsibilities. This image and its possible failings have an impact not only on professional identity, but also on deep, fundamental aspects of the self. The second topic concerns the triangular relationship between the individual, small groups and the institution. Between the individual and the institution, a small group of friends and colleagues may find space. This small group has different functions to those of the institution, yet can take over those functions if the institution fails to Read more

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Forms of institutions. Creative and Destructive Processes

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Abstract

This essay examines different aspects of the life of institutions. Through an analysis working on an anthropological and psychoanalytical level, contrasting yet coexisting aspects are brought to light. Beginning from an analysis of the recent film The Lobster, which describes an anguishing form of institutional Dystopia which favours conformist and destructive individual and group experiences, a comparison with those institutional forms that, on the contrary, take the shape of supportive and creative relationships is proposed. This work presents reflections on the relationships between specific emotional contexts in the psychiatric institutions, the ritual constructive and destructive behavioural aspects Read more

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Institutions and economic science: links between cognitive processes and the emergence of social rules

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Abstract

Standard economic theory has long underestimated the role of institutions in economic systems and in the processes of change, focusing on equilibrium and the mechanisms that determine it spontaneously. Equilibrium, once achieved, is only interfered by external shocks (exogenous shocks) and it is not disturbed by dynamics developing within the system. Institutions, in this theoretical framework, are functional to achieve efficient outcomes but play no role in the process of economic change (North, 1990).
On the other hand, the heterodox approach to the economics, targeting the research into the processes by which institutions emerge and change, highlights their importance in social dynamics. Economics of institutions changes the focus of the analysis: it does not start from the study of the effects that given institutions can have on the economic systems, but it focuses on individual behavior and on the cognitive processes that determine it. This research field investigates the dynamics through which the interaction between Read more

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“Fare gruppo nelle istituzioni”. A review

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Fare Gruppo Nelle Istituzioni, Lavoro e psicoterapia di gruppo nelle istituzioni psichiatriche, edited by Claudio Neri, Roberta Patalano e Pietro Salemme, and published by FrancoAngeli, is a book whose conception is cheerful and successful in its intent stated of being a practical and nimble tool […] something resembling a joiner’s manual for those who wish to build projects and to carry forward group activities in the context of intervention on mental distress.
And if it’s true that writing a book, that can be useful in clinical practice, is anything but simple task, it’s also true that Fare Gruppo Nelle Istituzioni is a text that offers more than it promises: it widens reflections and thoughts about the “doing”.
Francesco Barale, in his mindful, accurate and comprehensive preface, doesn’t fail to point out that, among the aims enounced in the introduction by Claudio Neri, the main one is that this book can be lively and useful. Neither he fails to point out how, by his experience as a reader and as a trained person, both achievements are accomplished.
One could wonder what makes the reading of such a technical text, so pleasurable.
And when I say “pleasurable”, I mean something that is prompting as the sensation evoked by the word but, Read more