What envelope are we talking about? From the skin ego to professional practice analysis groups

Résumé 0

This text describes certain uses of the notion of the psychic envelope and of the skin ego by Didier Anzieu, which are both similar and different in the individual or group context. Whether we are talking about the envelope that keeps individuals together in a group or about a necessary step in individual development, as in Mrs. Oggi’s cure, the evolution of the notion of the envelope has proven useful. Balint groups, centered on the analysis of professional practice, have become useful tools outside of the purely medical sphere. Can we use the idea of the psychic envelope in these other types of groups? What then becomes of this envelope and what phenomena does it allow us to describe? It seems that the transformations of the group envelope correspond to the advances of work on the professional self.