What intertwines in group analysis: reflections on (inter)corporeality in the group analytic setting

Abstract

Starting from the concept of the group analytic matrix originally developed by Cortesão (2008), a reflection is proposed on the dimension
of intercorporeality in the group analytic setting. Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Cartesian dualism expands the possibility of understanding humans as
a psychophysical unit, whose consciousness is embodied. The concept of chiasm, presented in The Visible and the Invisible (2019), dissolves rigid
boundaries between the self and the other, establishing intersubjectivity primarily through intercorporeality. This paradigm challenges the “myth
of the isolated mind”, orienting towards a post-Cartesian psychoanalysis (Stolorow & Atwood, 2019), which defines the mind as an embodied
intersubjective system. It is argued that the group analytic setting takes place in a dynamic and living intercorporal field, where even language is
conceived as a “gesticulation with words” (Fuchs, 2016). In this setting, therapeutic change emerges from this intertwining, also activated by implicit
relational knowing (Stern, 2007) and reconfigured by moments of meeting. The Portuguese School of Group Analysis has been integrating important
contributions that allow for the expansion of its theoretical and technical scope. Thus, it is evidenced that the group analytic matrix becomes a chiasm
of presences or a potential space that recovers the self and the other in their alterity, combating the disappearance of the other (Han, 2024).