Milestones in the History of Group Analysis. The European Group Analytic Movement and the Question of Internationality of Group Analysis
Juan Campos Avillar, M.D, Group Analyst and Honorary Member of the Group Analytic Society (London) & Hanne Campos, Ph.D. Sociology, Group Analist and Member GAS and IGA.
This is an historical document in more than one sense. First of all, it makes reference to and includes testimonies of the development of Group Analysis from its foundation in 1952 till the present day. Further it describes what the landmarks of this development were in Juan’s view. It is a fact that professional groups change with time, anyhow. For groupanalysts, however, there are two questions to be made and answered. One is: have the objectives of the change been spelled out, proposed and decided upon? The other is: which is the larger group context and its objectives in view of which the subgroups conceive and decide their objective and process of change. I believe that it is in this sense that Juan has wanted to call the attention of his colleagues, warning: Let’s be careful, there are changes going on that may not be in the best interest of healthy growth of groupanalysts personally and group analysis as a whole!
The moments of change he proposed for discussion are four.
1. Together with other colleagues, as was Sheila Thompson’s case, Juan believed that the Group Analytic Society and the model of communication created by Foulkes with GAIPAC 
(Group Analysis International Panel and Correspondence, 1966) were the most congenial forms of association for groupanalysts. When GAIPAC split into a respected Journal and a Bulletin, which later became Contexts, there arrived the point that Juan felt that Group Analysis was going towards institutionalized training, not exactly the way he envisioned as the most propitious. During and after the 1980 Copenhagen International Congress, he called on the doors of whoever he thought might be willing to think this through (UK members, overseas members, the president then Jane Abercrombie, Elizabeth Foulkes, his Italian colleagues Fabrizio y Diego Napolitani, Leonardo Ancona, and many more…)
2. The second change, head over heels following the first one, was an awareness that a European Group Analytic Movement was in progress. The V European Workshop of Group Analysis in January 1981 had the significant title of “Group Analysis: a Wider Role?”. Juan takes cognizance that there is a before and an after of S. H. Foulkes’ death for GAS, its members and the development of Group Analysis. This is when he starts getting together his “Yellow Bird”, as he called it, because the cover for his historical reflections and the communication with his colleagues was in the form of the old GAIPAC, with the characteristic yellow cover and black print —XIV/1 april 1981 issue, adding: group analysis, its roots and destiny, the gaipac way,… of course— You will find it at the beginning of this dossier. The GAS Spring meeting in May 1982 at Bedford College London was the milestone where many proposals and also active efforts to institute new relationships on the national and European level were made. Juan’s two proposal at Bedford College —the establishment of two subcommittees of the Society Committee, one to deal with international and trans-national matters and, the other, a GAIPAC subcommittee to deal with the organization of symposia, workshops and correspondence— were unanimously accepted, but ignored or misinterpreted in praxis during the years to come.
3. Inter alia a midway seminar was arranged in Rome in April 1987. To the Italian colleagues present, who had been involved in Group Analysis since the early days, it did not look as if it was heading toward what had been decided at Bedford College. Juan’s preoccupation then was beginning to be about which could be the appropriate environment to facilitate an encompassing group analytic movement. This is the time when Juan, then vice-president of IAGP, started to explore the possibility of a specialized Group Analysis Section within that Association as a viable place, something Foulkes had contemplated many years before. This is how the present dossier came to have its final somewhat long title: “Milestones in the History of Group Analysis. The European Group Analytic Movement and the Question of Internationality of Group Analysis”. To cut a long story short: During the IX European Symposium of Group Analysis, celebrated in Heidelberg in 1993, place was made for a three months adjourned Annual General Meeting of the Group Analytic Society (London), the first time held outside the United Kingdom, when the members had to decide on how its Constitution had to concretely reflect the international character of the Society. Also, curiously, the Symposium made place for an IAGP Board Meeting where it was decided that the psycho-dramatist members of the Association could constitute an International Psychodrama Section. In consequence, the Network of Study Groups in Group Analysis, so named from 1989 till 1993, was renamed Group Analysis Section, something not acceptable the year before since the meaning seemed to imply “splitting”…
Something else and new happened during the Heidelberg Symposium. Members of different Group Analytic Institutes, having been founded at the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties of last century, set up an interim working group —two from the London Institute, three from Athens, two from Zurich, one from Denmark, and one from Germany. This group, eventually and significantly, founded in Heidelberg in 1988 the European Group Analytic Training Institutions Network, EGATIN. Institutionalization and institutional control were riding the waves!
All correspondence and interchange for the Heidelberg dossier were done by fax and Xerox-copies, since still no e-mail or other communication technologies were at our disposal. The Report of the “Historical Overview” during the Plenary Session of August 31, 1993, 10:15-1130, chaired by Brian Boswood, then President of the Group Analytic Society (London) and the discussion following it were omitted in the Proceedings of the Symposium. No tape of the session was made.
4. Time went by. Juan never gave up hope that the historical dossier of the GAS constantly growing in size, eventually would be useful in reflecting on present-day problems of the Society and its members. When in 2004 the Group Analytic Society and its Committee were facing the AGM in deep trouble, and Luisa Brunori, the then president, entrusted Juan to write some historical notes for the event, Juan once again has recourse to the dossier and establishes an Internet group, so that people could dialogue before going to the AGM, or participate and help to alleviate the Society’s ills even when not being able to come in person.
His reflections to the Special Study Day 2004 titled “The Group Analytic Society (London): Present and future” are the following:
- Since Heidelberg, the Group Analytic Society is constitutionally an international society. The question of its name that has centered the discussion in Contexts ever since is a pseudo-problem. The problem now is to decide what sort of society we should be; a society of group analysts, a network of group analytic groups or an international association of group analysis? To reach a conclusion, we would have to contemplate the issues raised by Elizabeth Foulkes in her report on the “Meeting of Members of the Group Analytic Society (London) attending the International Congress of Group Psychotherapy at Copenhagen” in August 1980.
- The Group Analytic-Society is by nature a local teaching-training society and in essence a trans-national society; a society of individuals who in the mind of Foulkes gather together to help each other in their life task of being group analysts.
- To think of Group Analysis as a confederation of group analytic societies or institutes, I feel is a big mistake. Most likely what this favors, in consonance with the actual trend towards globalization, is the competition for power and money of the different groups associated in this endeavor.
- …once upon a time paper communication was complemented by face to face encounters in symposia, workshops and other scientific or social activities. This is how GAIPAC was built, and the international projection began. Nowadays, maybe the time is ripe to put the new CITs at the service of communication. Subscription of virtual members to the Society may bring enough new members and money to get us out of the crisis as it is formulated at the moment.
- The last point is not a question of age. Elizabeth Foulkes quite well understood that the Spanish translation of Foulkes’ works and their electronic publication and distribution by Internet, instead of hampering distribution rather facilitated it, mostly among people of low income. It is on these grounds that Elizabeth transferred the author rights of these publications. Unfortunately, she could see only the production of Foulkes’ introductory book of the collection that we are preparing in Barcelona for Spanish speaking countries. If we find that this works, it could be an example to be followed by other language areas.
Since we open this Blog on Group Analysis in memory of Juan Campos, I thought it appropriate to make this legacy of the author available to the colleagues and people he addressed this dossier to. I hope it is food for thought for some and an impulse to change for all.