In this article, the author integrates some of his own personal memories as a patient in a therapeutic group led by Ferdinando Vanni with his theoretical considerations after having read "New ideas on unconscious defences in groups". From these considerations some questions arise about the connexions between therapeutic experience in a group and individual psychoanalytic experience. The author especially highlights the converging and diverging motions deriving from the two theoretical/clinical fields that Vanni dealt with.
Keywords: Primal group phantasy, current mutual definition, group threshold, corporeality of the group, transference, cultural matrix.