The 5th International Assembly of Researchers in Pichonian Social Psychology and the Operative Conception of the Group continues the process initiated in Rimini (2016), in Madrid (2018), in Salvador de Bahia (2022), in Montevideo (2024), and once again in Rimini (2026).
Previously, between 1981 and 1991, a movement dedicated to research in these fields was organized: the International Center for Research in Social and Group Psychology (CIR).
Over these ten years, the Assemblies have reconstructed an international network of researchers, schools, and institutions committed to the Pichonian tradition; to field studies and J. Bleger’s theory of the areas; to studies on A. Bauleo’s Operative Conception of the Group; and to the transformation of reality and the theoretical field through work with groups and institutions.
CENTRAL THEME 2026
The Bond as Subject in Contemporary Times
The theme chosen for this gathering is The Bond as Subject in Contemporary Times.
The bond is not merely a relationship between individuals, but a collective actant (*), capable of generating a field, meaning, and emergents.
Today, the bond is at the center of profound transformations: new forms of power, a crisis of solidarity, hybrid groups, artificial intelligences, ecological crisis, migrations, and wars.
Alongside bonds between human beings, the Assembly will also explore bonds with the non-human: animals, plants, forests, rivers, the earth, the sky, and climatic forces.
These themes engage in dialogue with the ontological turn in anthropology, which has revolutionized the way we understand the world, the subject, and collectivities.
(*) The actant is any element capable of acting in the field and of being acted upon by the field, participating in the production of the emergent.
It does not correspond to the individual or to a psychological subject: it is a relational function that emerges from the bond and is transformed through the task.
An actant can be: a person, a group, a body of knowledge, a technical object, an affect, an event, an image, or even an absence or a lack.
What defines the actant is not its nature, but its operative position in the field: its capacity to generate transformations, deviations, obstacles, and openings — that is, to produce meaning through interaction.