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Experiences of Applying Enrique Pichon-Rivière’s Group Operative Concepts in Sweden, 2002–2015

By Sören Lander

The Pichonian Project as Part of Enlightenment Thinking

Could we view the Pichonian project as an extension of Enlightenment ideals—seeking to “illuminate” and bring greater clarity? Yes, perhaps we can. The Enlightenment’s core idea was faith in human reason. It posited that all individuals are capable of thinking independently and should not uncritically accept claims made by authorities or other powerful figures. Additionally, it emphasized that society develops best when individuals collaborate as equals (source: Wikipedia).

Introductory Reflections

After much deliberation about whether my experiences from teaching and applying Enrique Pichon-Rivière’s theories—particularly concerning groups—between 2002 and 2015 might be of broader interest, I have finally written this text.

Now retired and no longer professionally active, I am able to reflect with some distance on how Pichon-Rivière’s concepts enriched my professional life as a psychologist and psychotherapist. Over the last 10–12 years, I have also established connections within the international Pichonian community, enabling me to share insights about how this theoretical framework has been received in Sweden.

My ability to comment on this subject is grounded in four key factors:

1) Language Skills and Translation Work: I speak and read Spanish fluently and have translated numerous Pichonian texts from Spanish to Swedish. This also allows me to follow developments on various Pichonian websites.

2) In-depth Knowledge of Pichon-Rivière’s Work: I have been deeply engaged with Pichon-Rivière’s theories for at least 25 years. This depth of understanding is crucial for accurately translating his and his followers' texts.

3) Active Engagement with the International Pichonian Movement: I remain in regular contact (as of 2024) with the international Pichonian network through the internet, email, and conferences. This includes maintaining connections with Göteborgs Psykoterapi Institut (GPI), which was instrumental in introducing Pichon-Rivière’s ideas to Sweden, as well as with individuals at GPI who continue to explore his work.

4) The Pichon.se Website: I manage a website—www.pichon.se—that hosts various texts, both my own and those of others, related to Pichon-Rivière’s work. The site still serves as a resource, with links to it from several other platforms.

Reflections on the reception in Sweden

This piece aims to provide an overview of how Pichon-Rivière’s thinking has been received and applied in Sweden, drawing on both personal experience and broader observations within the Swedish psychological and psychotherapeutic context.

Background
I first encountered the intellectual world of Enrique Pichon-Rivière in the mid-1980s during my psychology studies at the University of Gothenburg. Mats Mogren from the Gothenburg Psychotherapy Institute (GPI) was responsible for the section on clinical psychology. Within that course, some of Pichon-Rivière's concepts were introduced. It is worth emphasizing that it was through GPI that Pichon-Rivière was introduced to Swedish psychology in the first place.

For me, as a future psychologist, the Pichonian worldview filled a vacuum I perceived in Swedish psychology, which was predominantly influenced by Anglo-American perspectives. Concepts such as context or society were almost absent from that framework, and when present, they appeared in fragmented or disconnected forms. It was rare to gain the impression that psychological processes occur in a historically situated space with specific conditions likely to influence how people perceive their lives and the world around them. This situation remains largely unchanged today, which is why Pichon-Rivière’s thinking continues to be relevant for me.

What attracted me to Pichon-Rivière's thinking was the way he integrated the individual and societal dimensions in a comprehensible manner. His texts struck me as potentially operational (practical), offering a clearer understanding of how psychological knowledge could be applied more effectively.

Earlier, in the early 1980s, I had studied Spanish at the University of Gothenburg, though my grasp of the language and its nuances was not particularly strong. However, Pichon-Rivière's work was so compelling (and I was able to read Spanish texts fluently) that I began considering translating his work.

This became a reality in the late 1990s through commissioned translations for GPI. I translated Pichon-Rivière’s Teoría del vínculo (The Theory of the Link), El Proceso Grupal (The Group Process), and a pivotal interview book crucial for understanding both his life and work, Vicente Zito Lema’s Conversaciones con Enrique Pichon-Rivière. Sobre el arte y la locura (Conversations with Enrique Pichon-Rivière: On Art and Madness). These translated texts were later used in GPI's internal teaching.

However, due to challenges in obtaining publishing rights, these texts were never released in book form, despite multiple attempts over a long period. An exception is Zito Lema's interview with Pichon-Rivière from 1976. Publishing rights for this interview were recently secured, and with a new foreword written by Zito Lema in May 2022, just months before his passing.

Now, in 2024, when I reflect on the total volume of translated texts connected to the Pichonian intellectual tradition, it amounts to between 2,000 and 2,500 pages. Given how little-known this theoretical tradition is in Sweden, one of my colleagues may be correct in calling these translations a “cultural contribution.”

Encounters and Insights

In 1997, I had the privilege of meeting Ángel Fiasché in Gothenburg for a lengthy interview about Pichon-Rivière. Fiasché, one of GPI's founders in 1974, shared insights that became part of my translation work for GPI. The final version of the interview spanned 25 pages and was significant in highlighting aspects I had not previously noticed or understood. Particularly, the concept of the emergent was something of a revelation, along with the psychosocial philosophy that permeates Pichon-Rivière’s thinking.

In 2002 and 2011, I conducted interviews in Buenos Aires with Ana Quiroga, as well as with Dora Fiasché, Hernán Kesselman, and Tato Pavlovsky, about their perspectives on Pichon-Rivière and his influence. Over the past 20 years, I have continued to follow Spanish-language discussions within the "Pichonian" world through books, journals, and online forums, gaining a relatively comprehensive understanding of the ongoing discourse in this field.

As a Swedish representative, I have also participated in conferences in Southern Europe and South America, where the focus has been on Pichon-Rivière and operative groups.

Some Initial Reflections

What makes the pichonian theory so interesting? I think it has got to do with certain concepts that, for me, are highly relevant and useful in both group and individual interventions:

• The emergent;

• the basic work unit (existing-intervention-emergent);

• “prework-task-project” as a secuence;

• the dialectical spiral or the “inverted cone”;

• the link;

• the ECRO (Conceptual, Referential, and Operative Schema);

• the operative group.

Of course, there are many more interesting concepts, but these form a sort of central "conceptual cluster" for me. They emphasize the dialectical principle of constant movement and the Gestalt-Gestaltung process. This way of thinking is crucial as a practical "instrument" in, for instance, therapy groups. The modified version of the "Inverted Cone" (which I call the "Vector Model") functions as something of a mental map, allowing one to orient and reorient oneself within a group's (or an individual's, for that matter) evolving process, especially when the process becomes stagnant (stereotyped) and appears to lack openings.

The "emergent" as concept is, however, what most fascinates me in the pichonian thinking. It pertains to something new that emerges—seemingly unexpectedly—and is not merely the sum of what was previously known or mastered. (The word "emergent" actually exists in Swedish and is defined by the National Encyclopedia as: "emerging," "unexpected," derived from the Latin emergo, meaning "to rise," "to appear," signifying something that arises or becomes apparent more or less unexpectedly or unpredictably).

In a 2017 text (Pichon-Rivière's Psychoanalytic Contributions: Some Comparisons with Object Relations and Modern Developments in Psychoanalysis, from The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (2017) 98:129-143), the authors (D.E. Scharff, R. Losso, L. Setton) elaborate on this idea in the following way:

Among recent devolopments outside psychoanalysis that can enlarge our understanding of Pichon-Rivière’s ideas, chaos or complexity theory (Gleick, 1987) from the fields of mathematics and physics has shown how combining complex systems results in unpredictable results that allow for pattern recognition. The dynamic action of complex systems fosters the development of emergent properties not predictable from understanding of the subsystems that make up these complex systems. This is reminiscent of the way Pichon-Riviére discussed the quality of a maturing system as an emergent … Pichon-Rivière’s idea of an emergent quality of personality foreshadowed the formulations of complex systems by chaos theory. In addition, however, complexity theory postulates that alternative organizations exist in all of us, and that under certain conditions a person may take up a little-used pattern that represents either dysfunction or alternative new potential for enhanced function, depending on circumstances. Chaos theory gives a mathematical model for discontinuous growth, for the capacity of individuals, families, and groups to break with the past and move suddenly from previously dominant patterns of thought and behavior towards new potential (Ibid sid 139-140).

Something new emerges against the backdrop of the old, becoming the synthesis which—in a dialectical perspective (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)—forms a new thesis, along with its antithesis, and subsequently another synthesis, and so forth. (Here, one might also consider this from a Gestalt psychology perspective, where the emergent is an aspect of the interplay between figure and ground).

Pichonian Perspective with Elements of Group Analysis 2002–2015

In 2001, I initiated studies to become a licensed group psychotherapist at the institute called "Psykoterapisällskapet" in Stockholm. The institute’s teaching focused on the theoretical perspective of the German-English group analyst S. H. Foulkes. It was referred to as "group analysis." These new ideas about groups in a practicas sense influenced my understanding of the pichonian group operative concept. For the sake of clarity I will now briefly diverge to describe what I perceive as some essential features of Foulkesian group analysis.

According to the Foulkesian perspective, every individual is born into a network of communication processes that inevitably exert a profound influence from birth, and perhaps even before. Naturally, the newborn child also contributes to this communication network with their unique actions and responses. Foulkes views humans as socially related individuals, existing both in the external physical reality and the internal psychological one.

At its core, Foulkes considers a sick individual as a relatively isolated part of an "organism"—namely, the social group, and primarily the family, from which people develop their personality and identity. Foulkes saw loneliness and isolation from the group as symptoms of illness and as disruptions in communication ability. An individual's departure or isolation from the group (society and other people) is seen as a path toward destruction.

Foulkes argues that neuroses and various other psychological disorders consist of disturbances in the ability to communicate. Communication is also the primary tool used in group analysis, analogous to free association in psychoanalysis. The aim of group-analytic therapy is to restore the capacity for communication. This communication seeks to achieve greater self-awareness and make the unconscious conscious.

In group-analytic theory, the group is viewed as a whole, with the individuals as its components. Group analysis is the analysis in, of, and through the group. The group is the primary unit, and the individual is merely a part of it.

Foulkes describes how the therapist aims to use the group as a therapeutic tool. By establishing and maintaining the group-analytic situation, the therapist forges and continuously refines this "tool." The therapist primarily focuses on the immediate present situation.

Interpretation of resistance and transference is incorporated into group analysis from psychoanalysis. However, the therapist’s guiding principle is trust the group, meaning the therapist interprets as little as possible and instead facilitates communication among the members. Too frecuent interventions or premature engagement by the therapist can act as a barrier for the group’s own development. When the therapist does interpret, this is done at both the group and individual levels (that is, the individual in relation to the group).

The concepts of "foreground" and "background" (borrowed from Gestalt psychology) are central to Foulkesian theory. The total communication network that develops within the group—known as the matrix—inevitably becomes the background against which each individual in the group participates and acts. Each individual becomes a node in this hypothetical network field.

According to this framework, the group exhibits a manifest behavior (figure) among its members that arises from a latent shared foundation—the group matrix (background). The matrix ultimately determines the meaning and significance of all events; all communication and interpretations rely on it. This hypothetical network field is temporally (vertical and referring to personal life history) and spatially (horizontal and referring to interactions within the group) related.

Everything expressed in the group originates from the matrix, and everything said in the group also leaves an imprint on this matrix, which directs the group's dynamics. The matrix represents a slowly evolving group phenomenon in which individual members' neurotic responses can be mapped in relation to the group context.

Foulkes entertained ideas about a creative adaptation to society, but not as a superficial phenomenon. His vision focused on strengthening each group member’s creative capacity and development, reducing the neurotic inhibition of spontaneity, sensitivity, and the ability to emotionally belong and relate to others.

I soon discovered striking similarities between Foulkes’ and Pichon-Rivière’s ways of thinking, although I read Foulkesian group analysis through my "pichonian lenses." Many "aha!!" moments arose while reading Foulkes. Pichon-Rivière clarified concepts I found obscure or convoluted in Foulkes, while Foulkes, in turn, helped me recognize and understand aspects of Pichon’s thinking that I had previously overlooked. Above all, the practical experience of leading therapeutic groups analytically and “trusting the group” (a kind of Foulkesian mantra) proved invaluable.

At the time, the director of Psykoterapisällskapet was Göran Ahlin. He showed an interest in what Pichon-Rivière could contribute, as the name was familiar to him through his Italian group-analyst contacts. Göran also guided me to Olov Dahlin, another prominent figure in Swedish group analysis, who became my thesis supervisor.

My thesis was titled "An Argentine Operative Group Approach: Enrique Pichon-Rivière’s Conceptual World, Ana Quiroga, and the Pichonian Concept of 'Operative Group.'" It served as an introduction to the key concepts in Pichon-Rivière’s group-oriented thinking. The central part of the thesis was the "fieldwork" I conducted in the form of an interview with Ana Quiroga in Buenos Aires in 2002.

The Foulkesian approach, with its focus on fostering a creative adaptation to society, resonated more with me than the Bionian tendency dominating Swedish group thinking at the time, especially in AGSLO groups (influenced by Tavistock in England) focused on organizational contexts. By the early 2000s, I had already developed a deep interest in groups, largely thanks to my translation work centered on Enrique Pichon-Rivière and his Argentine followers, including Ángel Fiasché, Hernán Kesselman, Tato Pavlovsky, and Ana Quiroga. This background allowed me to read Foulkes with a pichonian perspective, which both enriched my understanding of group processes and highlighted aspects of Foulkes' thinking that complemented the Pichonian framework.

After completing my training as a group psychotherapist, I began applying these insights in my work within adult psychiatry in central Sweden, utilizing both pichonian and foulkesian approaches in my therapy groups. From 2002 to 2015, I maintained at least one weekly therapy group, gaining substantial experience as a group therapist. My practice allowed me to blend different theoretical models, including the increasingly dominant cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). While my foundational perspective remained pichonian, I adapted my ECRO (conceptual, referential, and operational schema) to include various methodologies.

However, I observed with concern the narrowing of available therapeutic modalities in Sweden, driven by administrative policies favoring CBT at the expense of other approaches. And now, 2024, CBT dominates both individual and group therapy in Sweden and thereby stifling innovation in other therapeutic models—a trend I believe could harm the population's possibilities to get access to good psychological and psychiatric treatment in the future.

Between 2004 and 2009, I was invited to provide group training within my psychiatric practice, applying the operative group model in both short-term and long-term contexts. The Vector-model (“or the inverted cone”) proved especially useful in illustrating group and treatment processes, whether in primary care, Balint groups for doctors, or teacher supervision in elementary schools.

Bridging Pichon-Rivière and Foulkes: Insights and Discoveries

One striking observation during this period was the relative obscurity of Pichon-Rivière in the English-speaking world - and, conversely, of Foulkes in the Spanish-speaking world, where Bion’s influence predominates. This became evident through my contact with the Spanish group analyst Juan Campos, who had collaborated in the 1970s on translating Foulkes into Spanish. Campos and Hernán Kesselman, a disciple of Pichon-Rivière, sought in the 1980s to synthesize their approaches into what they termed “operative group analysis.” This cross-pollination underscored the richness of integrating these two paradigms.

From my perspective, Pichon-Rivière’s writings and theories appear broader, deeper, and more multidisciplinary than Foulkes’. While group analysis can be seamlessly incorporated into the operative group framework, the reverse is less evident. This may stem from Pichon-Rivière’s definition of his framework as “social psychology,” encompassing more than just group dynamics. The centrality of ECRO in Pichonian thought provides a comprehensive schema for understanding social and psychological processes, potentially explaining its broader applicability compared to Foulkes’ group-focused model.

For several years in the early 2000s (until 2009) I was a member of the “Swedish Association for Group Therapy and Group Development” and its management team (serving as vice chairman for a period and briefly as chairman, though I stepped down for personal reasons). Similar to my time during my training in the institute of “Psykoterapisällskapet”, I sought to generate broader interest in the pichonian thought and particularly concerning groups. For a number of years, I was also a member of the "Group Analytic Institute (GAI)" in Stockholm and the “Group Analytic Society” in London.

I previously mentioned two significant group analysts in Stockholm who were instrumental in my efforts to disseminate knowledge about Pichon-Rivière: Olov Dahlin and Göran Ahlin. A third was Inger Larsson. All three had international connections and some awareness of Pichon-Rivière's theories, though they had not been able to study them in depth due to the lack of written material available in either Swedish or English.

Now, let us delve into some of the experiences from the years when I sought to spread the “Pichonian gospel” in Sweden! This account is based on notes I made directly in connection with my applications of the group operative approach.

Experience 1, Year 2004

Apart from a couple of scattered and not entirely thought-through presentations in 1991 and 2002, it was not until April 2004 that I made my first more “serious” presentation of the Pichonian paradigm. This took place at the GPI in Gothenburg and was referred to as an “open seminar.” The fact that it happened at GPI was likely due to the existing knowledge and experience there regarding the application of pichonian thinking (and it was, after all, Mats Mogren from GPI who first opened my eyes to the existence of an interesting theorist named Pichon-Rivière in Argentina).

The group of listeners was surprisingly large (about 90 people), considering that the subject was relatively new and that later presentations hardly drew as many attendees. One question that arises is whether the number of listeners (then and later) has to do with the topic, the “spirit of the times,” or the manner in which the concept was presented. My reflections after this presentation in Gothenburg (and extending into subsequent presentations) were that there were already existing notions about Pichon-Rivière among some of the listeners and that, consequently, the operative group was seen as something synonymous with a “change agent” and thereby representing something new, challenging, mysterious, and complex.

Such a “change agent” can evoke both depressive anxiety (fear of loss) and persecutory anxiety (fear of attack) because it can possibly challenge the prevailing “stereotypes” or ways of thinking (general opinions, accepted norms, everyday practices, traditional use, and so on; today, one might also include “evidence-based practice” in this enumeration of stereotypes).

When a group of people gathered in 2004 for this first public lecture on Pichon-Rivière and operative groups, they brought with them their respective frames of reference/ECROs (largely shaped by the traditions of Anglo-Saxon psychology and psychotherapy). Perhaps their frames of reference were challenged or at least questioned by this pichonian ECRO—a perspective that, among other things, brought society and politics into a “room” where such questions are typically not discussed.

In an interview from the 1980s, Ana Quiroga provides the following insightful comment about what an ECRO is:

"In reality, any theoretical system containing operational elements can be called an ECRO. The ECRO we use is based on Pichon’s thinking … Pichon’s thought provides a general theoretical framework regarding the individual and a methodological conceptual scheme that makes it possible to analyze the various variables of a situation and, based on that, to design courses of action."

This ECRO perspective and its usefulness were further illuminated for me through an insightful comment made by an Argentine doctor attending the lecture.

Pichon-Rivière emphasizes the importance of "learning to think", which, in its extension, can generate anxiety because such an act (or behavior) can lead to something new appearing or coming to life. Based on each person’s ECRO (or worldview), different aspects of the observed reality emerge as important (emergent phenomena). There is no theory-free, ideology-free, “pure” observation; what one sees (or thinks one sees) is conditioned by one’s underlying worldview (or ideology). Perhaps this realization is why the Pichonian way of observing (of course also an “ideology”) can highlight aspects of reality that might otherwise be obscured (hidden, "below the radar," to use a modern phrase), particularly within the predominantly neo-positivist perspective that prevails today (“everything must be measurable, and what cannot be measured does not exist or cannot be considered”).

Among the questions that lingered after the seminar at GPI were primarily two:

• Why haven’t the translations of Pichon-Rivière’s works been published yet?

• What obstacles hinder the publication of his texts?

Already in 2003—while presenting and defending my scientific work during my training at Psykoterapisällskapet in Stockholm—I encountered reactions that hinted at how Pichon-Rivière’s worldview might be received in the Swedish therapeutic community. During my training, I had given a brief introductory lecture on Pichon but had not delved into details. The reactions at that time included:

• The societal perspective in Pichon’s work was interesting, new, and exciting, as was the dialectical perspective.

• From a Kleinian perspective, there were some speculations about whether the argentine society of 2002 was in the schizoid-paranoid position.

• The pichonian terminology was so new and complex that a glossary would be needed to define the new concepts.

• The pichonian way of working resembled a systemic network-like approach (my objection was that the pichonian theoretical framework is significantly deeper with its vertical psychoanalytic perspective, whereas the network perspective primarily has a horizontal one).

• This isn’t new! It resembles the network perspective, sociology, object relations theory, etc. In what way would the pichonian perspective be superior to the group-analytic one? (This last comment is understandable if one approaches Pichon from a group-analytic perspective; I, on the other hand, did the opposite and incorporated the group-analytic approach as a new part of my pichonian ECRO).

• One of the fundamental ideas in Pichon’s work seems to be “the inverted cone”, the dialectical spiral… in this text or discourse one is not introduced to the simplest parts of the theory first (as is traditional when encountering a new theory); instead, one suddenly finds oneself directly in the pichonian world, in the here-and-now of the modern argentine world … and in spiral form, certain concepts are repeatedly coming back - with each new encounter being different from the last.

• Pichon is a “boundary-crosser”.

• Pichon is largely unknown in Europe, and in the education given by Psykoterapisällskapet no one except director Göran Ahlin, who was familiar with Pichon through his Italian group analysis contacts, had heard of him.

• Through the scientific thesis of Sören and his earlier lecture, one gains access to a theoretical tradition previously unknown due to language barriers.

I find the above comments relevant to include as part of “Experience 1” because they show (in a perhaps more reflective way) the reactions to the existence of a theorist who was previously unknown. At GPI in Gothenburg, there was some awareness, but at Psykoterapisällskapet in Stockholm, essentially no one except Göran Ahlin was familiar with Pichon.