Using the model of the institution-as-group, this article points out a transformative process affecting individual and group psychic envelopes. The contingencies of the gradual internalization of the setting remind us that for some adolescents the work of differentiating borders and re-establishing a skin around thoughts must come before any focus on repressed content. The group’s self-reorganizing abilities support these changes.

Adolescence, 2016, 34, 1, 65-82.