Psychic functions and processes of an artistic mediation group with migrant men

Résumé 0

This article offers some insights into the specificities of the group psychic dynamics of an artistic mediation therapeutic workshop with migrant men. For nine months, on a one-and-a half-hour weekly basis, the “groupe dessinature” – as one of the men called it, took us on a rich and fascinating clinical journey. The verbatim accounts and creations that we gathered have taught us much about the main issues at stake in such a setting. We propose, therefore, to raise the chiasmus points that are revealed between the group and individual issues involved in the migratory and cultural history of each participant. More precisely, the group seems to reactualize psychic conflicts of mourning, exile and the rupture of the containing “cultural frame”, as well as the defences associated with it. Artistic mediation makes it possible to observe these psychic movements evoked by the group situation while, at the same time, containing the possibility of symbolizing them.