In this paper we want to show how monographic writing groups, inspired by institutional pedagogy, constitute a way of linking pedagogy and psychoanalysis. First, we will present our proposals to consider more deeply the findings of the group psychoanalytic approach, both for pedagogical practice and research. In a paper published in 2015, analysing a corpus of articles written by Fernand Oury, the co-founder of institutional pedagogy in France, we showed that group psychic processes are little taken into account in these texts. This weakness can be attributed to various factors we will present (Dubois & Geffard, 2015). More recently, we have made an attempt to fill this gap by proposing clinical hypotheses on the group psychic processes potentially at work in institutionalised classes (Geffard, 2018; Dubois, Guignard and Gpipc, 2021). We mainly refer to Bion (1962) and his followers, including Neri (1995). Then, we will focus on a group device linking pedagogy and psychoanalysis: the monographic group. At first sight, the monographs of institutional pedagogy may seem to fall into the category of ‘case histories’ so common in the fields of psychology or psychoanalysis. But their particularity is they don’t submit so easily to the injunctions of narrativity, at least during the time of writing. Because monographs are produced in a group space, a space of articulation of intrapsychic and intersubjective dimensions. It is the successive phases of writing that seem to conceal the materials on which to focus our analyses when we try to perceive how this device can be a bearer of subjective reworking for participants. In terms of training, we will refer to monographs as the possibility of constructing a narrative of a clinical experience, i.e. an experience whose affects must be elaborated in order to be linked to thought processes, to be ‘metabolised’ (Bion, 1967). In the case of teacher training, for example, what is called a ‘clinical experience’ is what can be played out in the different times devoted to a student about whom a narrative is written and then put at work in a group situation. It is the work of shared writing that allows the dimension of the encounter to be heard in the sense of a ‘disturbance’ (Devereux, 1967) that affects each of the two sides, without forgetting that what is written in a group situation is linked above all to the psychic movements of the person who is saying it.

Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: William Heinemann. Bion, W. R. (1967). Second Thoughts. London: William Henemann. Devereux, G. (1967). From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences. The Hague, Paris : Mouton & Co. Dubois, A. & Geffard, P. (2015). Fernand Oury, les groupes de la classe coopérative et l’approche psychanalytique (1955-1958). Cliopsy, 14, 37-55. Dubois, A., Guignard, M. et le Gpipc. (2021). Une pédagogie pour grandir. Pédagogie institutionnelle et approche groupale. Paris : L’Harmattan. Geffard, P. (2018). Expériences de groupe en pédagogie institutionnelle. Paris : L’Harmattan. Neri, C. (1995). Gruppo. Roma: Edizioni Borla.