The essay was first presented as a report to the first International Psychodrama Congress, held in Paris in September 1964. It was published as ‘La Transversalite’ in the Revue de Psychotherapie Institutionelle 1 (1964). The essay was published in English in Psychoanalysis and Transversality: Texts and Interviews 1955-1971.
The discussion on Wednesday will focus around two broad questions, informed by Guattari’s ‘Transversality’ essay and by the three key points extracted below:
1. What are the conditions of and obstacles to the emergence of transversality in the institution today?
2. When and under what conditions does ‘it speak’ in institutional life?
‘[…] the problem of the effect of the social signifier on the individual faces us at every moment and at every level’ (102)
‘[…] any possibility of creative intervention will depend on its initiators being able to exist at the point at which “it should have been able to speak”’ so as to be imprinted by the signifier of the group’ (115)
‘Transversality in the group is a dimension opposite and complementary to the structures that generate pyramidal hierarchisation and sterile ways of transmitting messages.’ (118)