Psychoanalytic exports in the school setting

This article describes and substantiates some of the requirements for how a psychoanalyst should respond to the demands of an educational institution in order to constitute best practices. It considers the following requirements: the need to renounce the position of assigned expert (paradox of an expert/ignorant), the position of outsider that must be held, the specificity of the principle of abstention, and the benefits of appealing to a second look. This second look includes an analysis of the analyst's involvement, while the analyst is inserted in a society whose discourses could parasitise their thinking. These four requirements are illustrated in an experience carried out in public schools in a context of social vulnerability. The clinical device created and applied in these settings is a narrative workshop that uses children's literature as linking objects. The example described here is limited to one instance of the use of the device and, in particular, to the process and the difficulties of working with a six-year-old girl who participated in one of the workshops. The changes she experienced are revealed through an analysis of an observed phoric function and its vicissitudes. This case allows us to note the complexity of the transference dynamics that must be sustained.