Grup d´Analisi Barcelona

Pioneers: P. de Maré

patrickIntroductory comments in memory of Pat de Maré and his work

by Hanne Campos

Pat de Maré was one of the two original authors emerging from post-foulkesian Group Analysis (Londres) (1).  The members of Grup d’Anàlisi Barcelona had the privilege of knowing him personally and working with him. In 1988, Juan Campos, as coordinator of the scientific program of the annual symposium of the SEPTG, invited him to conduct the large group of this latter event. He was also asked to lead a large group before and after the symposium for interested professionals in Barcelona and Bilbao. Finally, the experience was realized in Barcelona with a group of over 40 people, an experience which gave the impulse of making arrangements for a bi-weekly large group which met on the premises of the San Pablo Hospital in Barcelona during more tan three years.
On occasion of the symposium, Grup d’Anàlisi published a bi-lingual version English-Castilian of the work of Pat de Maré on The History of the Large Group. The most important effect of this publication was that the London editor Karnac, after some years of resistance and upon seeing it, finally decided to publish the last work of Pat: Koinonia (2).
For The History of the Large Group, the author facilitated a curriculum vitae. But, when Juan Campos asked him for a more extended biography, he kindly responded to this invitation. In this Blog we include this autobiography. Beyond the personal data which permits us to know the author better, it is interesting to note that in his recall Pat includes the leaflet of Basil Beaumont “The technique of group work”, published in 1935 (3). The fact is that to know and work with that group of the Society for Creative Psychology was the first professional imprint of group work Pat de Maré received in his long experience and he feels this to be so until his last days.
In case it may bring the reader nearer to the work and the thinking of Pat de Maré, we include in this space dedicated to the author a bilingual paper English/Castilian of Hanne Campos (4) related to the diagram of the three cultures elaborated by Pat during a long time. Pat responded to the paper in the following terms: “…Thank you very much for calling people’s attention to the diagram… which represents all I have tried to say in only one page!… You are the first person ever to mention this diagram of the three cultures… Malcolm Pines told me that with your paper he now understands much better what I have intended to transmit and has invited me to write for Group Analysis, the journal, referring to some of the things you have written… I am very grateful to you…”
Pat de Maré died in 2008, leaving us the rich legacy of a life full of novel ideas and group practice which could help us to achieve a creative and peaceful collective life.

(1) The other is Robin Skynner who in a creative and original way promoted the study and practice of the family group, founding the Institute of Family Therapy, independent of the Institute of Group Analysis. His works are:  One Flesh: Separate Persons. Principles of Family and Marital Psychotehrapy (London: Constab le, 1976).  Families and how to survive them (London:  Methuen, 1983) written in collaboration with John Cleese, and Institutes and how to survive them. Mental health training and consultation (New York: Routledge, 1990), edited by John R. Schlapobersky.
(2) Patrick de Maré, Robin Piper and Sheila Thompson  Koinonia. From Hate, through Dialogue, to Culture in the Large Group, London: Karnac Books, 1991.
(3) Published in the Monografía I “Comunidad Terapéutica y/o Terapia de la Comunidad”, Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Psicoterapia y Técnicas de Grupo, Abril 1991.
(4) Hanne Campos, “Group Theories as con-text of group psychotherapy in particular and of group work in genera”, presented to the Sub-Plenary Session of the IX Congress of the International Association of Group Psychotherapy, Zagreb 1986.