Cassandra at the Gates: Institutional Literacy, Group Dynamics, and the Social Unconscious in Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Abstract: This address explores the often overlooked dimension of institutional literacy in relational psychoanalysis, situating it within the broader context of group dynamics and the social unconscious. Beginning with mythic and historical illustrations—from the fratricidal tragedy of Eteocles and Polynices to contemporary geopolitical crises—it argues that psychoanalytic institutions, like analytic dyads, are subject to unconscious repetitions of trauma, rivalry, and disavowal. The central claim is that the inability to recognize institutional dynamics—succession anxieties, ideological rigidity, and legacy conflicts—renders psychoanalytic communities vulnerable to fragmentation and ethical incoherence. Drawing from the concept of the “institutional unconscious,” the lecture critiques the prevailing intersubjective paradigm for its neglect of the analytic field’s collective and political dimensions. While relational psychoanalysis has expanded the analytic third, it still tends to privilege the dyad and undertheorize the systemic transmissions of trauma within institutions. Instead, the speaker calls for a theoretical and structural shift that includes large-group phenomena—sibling transferences, group-as-a-whole dynamics, and the psychic life of institutions—as essential to psychoanalytic training and practice. By invoking myths such as those of Pentheus and Dionysus, the talk illustrates how institutional rigidity and disavowed affect can result in catastrophe rather than transformation. Institutional literacy, then, is not merely an intellectual exercise but a clinical and ethical imperative. Only by metabolizing difference and engaging with unconscious structures at the institutional level can psychoanalysis truly offer a space for healing and innovation—both for its practitioners and for the communities they serve.