{"id":2083,"date":"2013-08-20T05:46:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T12:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grupdanalisi.org\/english-content\/juan-campos-a-life-work-in-groups\/1980-1998-from-groupanalysis-to-group-of-analysis-grup-danalisi-5\/"},"modified":"2017-07-10T11:23:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T11:23:11","slug":"1980-1998-from-groupanalysis-to-group-of-analysis-grup-danalisi-5","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.grupdanalisi.org\/en\/english-content\/juan-campos-a-life-work-in-groups\/1980-1998-from-groupanalysis-to-group-of-analysis-grup-danalisi-5\/","title":{"rendered":"1988-1998 Juan Campos and Alfreda Galt. Four stages of Correspondence"},"content":{"rendered":"

1980-1998 From Groupanalysis to Group of Analysis (Grup d\u2019An\u00e0lisi) 5<\/h3>\n

1988-1998 Juan Campos and Alfreda Galt. Four stages of Correspondence<\/h2>\n
\n

January 88-December 90<\/b><\/p>\n

First stage of the correspondence<\/b> between Juan Campos and Alfreda S. Galt<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Already in this first stage becomes evident the ample agreement in the conception of group analysis and the priorities of interests between Alfreda Galt and Juan Campos, as well as the link with Max Rosenbaum, well versed in and with a profound understanding of the work of Trigant Burrow, and colleague of Juan\u2019s on the Board of Directors of IAGP. Juan acquires access to the complete bibliography and information on Burrow and the Lifwynn Foundation, and spaces of mutual professional interchange open up: Alfreda writes about the Lifwynn Foundation in Cl\u00ednica y An\u00e1lisis Grupal and Juan writes in Lifwynn Correspondence.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/a>

Jack Wikse, Alfreda Galt and Juan Campos, 1990<\/p><\/div>\n

Also, already then the economic problem of the Lifwynn Foundation becomes evident. The members feel that the Foundation will close down when the ones who knew Burrow and worked with him will not be able to continue. However, the contact with Juan coincides with the circumstance that in 1988 some few friends show interest in that the foundation continue as a centre of Social Self-Inquiry<\/i>, just as it was originally conceived of and conducted (1995 T. Burrow Definition GA and SSI<\/a> bilingual document). In 1988 a young sociologist and university professor on a fellowship, Jack Wikse, joins the group as a director of research and in June 1989 he projects to construct \u2018a dialogue between the extensive group of correspondents with which Alfreda Galt interchanges letters during\u00a0 many years\u2019 and, says Alfreda in letter to Juan, \u201cbetween those of which you have been an inspiriting member\u201d. This letter (Correspondence First Stage<\/a>, pp. 23) includes A Proposal by The Lifwynn Foundation<\/i>, which in 1990 leads to the organization of a Conference on Addiction<\/i> to which Juan is invited and which he finds most stimulating. What encourages him most is that this visit to the United States implies the possibility of visiting the Lifwynn Foundation in Westport, Connecticut, the place where Trigant Burrow carried out his groupanalytic investigations together with a group of his collaborators. In one of the following trips Juan is accompanied by Hanne and his intimate friend Sheldon Waxenberg of New York, with whom he had trained in analytic group therapy twenty-five years back at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York and with whom together he had carried out his diploma group project of \u201cThe living room\u201d. Without doubt, in Juan\u2019s mind the precursor of the Lifwynn Correspondence, LifCor, is the correspondence initiated in the spring of 1948 by Trigant Burrow himself in relation to the \u201cNeurosis of Man\u201d, and also the one initiated by S. H. Foulkes in 1967 after retiring from the Maudsley Hospital. Comments Juan to Alfreda: \u201cWith … GAIPAC, I have had a lot of experience… and perhaps I can be of some help\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the same letter he says to her: \u201c… also thanks to the correspondence we maintain, the spirit of Group Analysis becomes more and more familiar to me… But, we poor human beings, how can we cure ourselves from our \u2018social neurosis\u2019? I will tell you how I do it. I shall follow with my readings and writings and will experiment with myself and with the group with which I work in the type of group work we do. In this direction just now we finished to constitute legally Grup d\u2019An\u00e0lisi Barcelona…\u201d Alfreda celebrates the leaflet of Gd\u2019AB (1989 Gd\u2019AB presentation<\/a>): \u201cI appreciated specially… the clear and comprehensive historical summary at the beginning of the leaflet… The work of \u2018Grup d\u2019An\u00e0lisi Barcelona\u2019 is really progressive and very little common and it is a satisfaction to be able to read from it\u201d (Correspondence First Stage<\/a>, pp. 34). And as is stated in the same letter, the texts of the leaflet of Grup d\u2019An\u00e0lisi Barcelona are widely quoted in the first number of Lifwynn Correspondence. Jack Wikse says to Juan: \u201cYour way of characterizing the work of Burrow as the first psychoanalytic investigation of the principle of authority, is very important! (Correspondence First Stage<\/a>, pp. 32). In effect, the contact with the life and work of Burrow motivates Juan still more in his study of the life and work of Freud in relation to the social functioning of the human being and as the direct and indirect founder of professional groups, associations and organizations. From 1988 onwards, without a doubt, Burrow and his work leave for always the most profound imprint on the work of Juan Campos and of the people who collaborate with him, and the impulse to legalize Grup d\u2019An\u00e0lisi\u2014 the inspiration, according to the correspondence, dates from the middle of the seventies\u2014 stems from the contact with Burrow\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

The rest of the correspondence of this first stage refers to the preparation and the posterior dialogue of the Conference on Addiction celebrated from 8 to 12 October of 1990, and a first preparation of a symposium on Trigant Burrow to be celebrated during the International Congress of IAGP in Montreal in 1992.<\/p>\n

The Conference on Addiction was an attempt to recover the practice of Social Self-Inquiry<\/i>\u2014the groupanalytic method in actual practice\u2014 in the analysis of what is considered an actual symptom of our social neurosis. After the Conference a dialogue in writing is established (example: Correspondence First Stage<\/a>, pp. 53) in view of concluding the experience. From this dialogue emerges in turn an attempt of creating a space of Social Self -Inquiry<\/i> (1995 T. Burrow Definition GA and SSI<\/a> bilingual document) with an agenda of monthly presencial meetings on the part of the persons geographically more near to New York.\u00a0 There follow diverse stages of this project of Social Self-Inquiry<\/i> until well into the new millennium. The Report <\/i>of the Conference is published in the following stage of the correspondence (Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>, pp. 16).<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a01991-1992<\/b><\/p>\n

Second stage of correspondence between Juan Campos and Alfreda S. Galt<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The subjects which occupy this second stage – (Correspondence Second Stage I <\/a>& Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>(Feb. 1991-Nov 1992) are linked by various common threads of the group method of analysis; this is to say the life and work of Trigant Burrow. However, upon passing from the first to the second stage of Juan\u2019s groupanalytic projects, threads are inserted from the proposals he makes in his place on the Board of Directors of IAGP, to which he belongs since 1983. The main subject corresponds to the aforementioned point 3: the proposal of a \u201cSpecialized Analytic Section in Group Analysis<\/i>\u201d in the IAGP as a transdisciplinary space of investigation for anyone interested in the group method of analysis as a reference in his work. The promotion of such a Section in the years 1991-92 is accepted under the name of Study Group in Group Analysis<\/i>, the specific trajectory of which is presented correspondingly.<\/p>\n

Lifwynn Correspondence a publication of The Lifwynn Foundation, the first number of which is published in the spring of 1990, for Juan Campos, the same than GAIPAC, signifies the written link between a continuous groupanalytic dialogue that alternates with presencial meetings. He conceives it as a transdisciplinary and transnational space. The first number of LifCor, beyond the correspondents of the Lifwynn Foundation, is sent with an explanatory letter of Juan Campos to the member organizations of the IAGP, to the individual members who identify themselves in the membership directory as groupanalysts or related professional ambits, and to the members who signed the petition to promote a section of groupanalysis in the Association (Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>, pp. 2). Some months later this letter is also sent to the members of the Executive<\/i> and the Board of Directors<\/i> of the IAGP (Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>, pp. 3) together with a Report of the Committee of the Study Group of Group Analysis \u00a0in preparation of the following meeting in Lisbon of this Committee[1]<\/a>.
\nThe network of contacts with the Lifwynn Foundation is interwoven by other threads with projects promoted in the IAGP. This second stage of correspondence also refers to a Symposium on Trigant Burrow during the Montreal Congress of the IAGP (Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>, pp. 17 to 37).<\/p>\n

In June 1992, a couple of months before the Congress, Juan Campos, as Chairman <\/i>of the Study Group in Group Analysis<\/i> informs the members of the Committee of the days and hours of the Symposium and also the meeting of the same Study Group following immediately after the Symposium (Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>, pp. 38). The letter post-Congress of Alfreda Galt of September 17, 1992 (Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>, pp. 39) gives a general idea of the development of these projects and her presentation. The number 2.2 of LifCor in turn is dedicated almost exclusively to the Symposium \u201cBeyond Dicotomy: The orientation of Trigant Burrow\u201d, celebrated during the XI Congress in August 1992 and the papers presented by Juan Campos, as chairman, Max Rosenbaum, Alfreda S. Galt, Lloyd Guilden and John R. Wikse (Correspondence Second Stage II<\/a>, pp. 41).<\/p>\n

This epoch coincides also with the effort to achieve that the Lifwynn Foundation become an organizational member of the IAGP. Juan considered imperative that the precursor of all groupanalytic associations and therapeutic communities occupy a place in the assembly of associations and societies dedicated to the practice and investigation of groups. The more specific moments are:<\/p>\n

Presentation of the intention of the Lifwynn Foundation of becoming a member on the part of Juan Campos to the Board of Directors Meeting in Lisboa en September 1991 (Correspondence Second Stage I<\/a>, pp. 2); application of the Lifwynn Foundation to be a member of the IAGP on the part of Alfreda Galt, then president en funciones<\/i> of the Foundation (Correspondence Second Stage I<\/a>, pp. 3 to 5); and communication of the Organizational Committee Chair<\/i> informing of the acceptance of the Lifwynn Foundation as organizational member of the IAGP (Correspondence Second Stage I<\/a>, pp. 6 to 7). As Juan Campos explains in different documents, it was a question of a symbolic act, necessary and transcendental, but the truth is that three years later the Lifwynn Foundation did not have any more the money required for continuing its adhesion, and it would have been expected that the IAGP offered it an honorary organizational membership.<\/p>\n

The extraordinary of these adventures is that Alfreda Galt with eighty years and a day, many pains and difficulties in walking, maintains the interest and the motivation for attending the IAGP Congress in Montreal and actively creatively participates. Moreover, three months before that Congress dies Hans Syz, the previous president and the last companion left to her from the times of the origins of the Lifwynn Foundation. But Alfreda Galt was an admirable person, kind and always disposed to put her grain of sand right to the last days of her life more than five years later. Juan promoted, just as he did with other colleagues, that she use all the possible new technologies. He gave her an Intel-Satisfaxtion Modem-Fax-Board which sometimes functioned and sometimes not, but her good will of communicating by this medium was unsurpassable. At the end of a letter of May she wrote with great joy: \u201cI am learning to use the computer!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a01993-1994<\/b><\/p>\n

Third stage of correspondence between Juan Campos and Alfreda S. Galt<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This third stage (January 1993-Dic1994: Correspondence Third Stage<\/a>) could be summed up in some questions: Where did the projects taken ahead these last years lead to? Which was the response to the Symposium on Trigant Burrow and a possible study of the work of this author in the Study Group in Group Analysis<\/i>?, but also in the continuous effort of making explicit what the authors understand as groupanalysis.<\/p>\n

In February of 1993 Alfreda writes to Juan: \u201cHere is the new number of Lifwynn Correspondence (already mentioned at the end of the earlier stage: Correspondence Second Stage (1)<\/a>, pp. 41), for the record of our pains and efforts of last summer, of which you were in great part the guiding spark.\u201d In the same letter she suggests the idea of sending this number of LifCor with the five presentations of the Symposium to the 124 members of IAGP that had been informed before the Congress, adding the Report you wrote about the meeting of the Study Group in Group Analysis… People asked themselves on how to read Burrow, and perhaps a list of adequate readings should be prepared\u201d (Correspondence Third Stage<\/a>, pp. 2). Consequently a shipment in this sense is prepared for the members of the Study Group and other members of the IAGP (Correspondence Third Stage<\/a>, pp. 4).<\/p>\n

The correspondence of this stage is also related to the contacts of the Lifwynn Foundation in the United States and in Europe and with the proposals of translation and the study of certain works of Trigant Burrow (Correspondence Third Stage<\/a>, pp. 8 to 15). It includes an interesting dialogue on questions of Alfreda about Bion to which Juan responds as follows (Correspondence Third Stage<\/a>, pp. 13) \u201cI never met Bion. Hanne yes, on an occasion in the Tavistock, and thinks that he is a real guru, a real shaman of the Kleinian clan. But, I know his work well and have passed many hours reading his Experiences in Groups and the rest of his writings. His method of managing himself in groups, however, I think it comes from Hadfield, an eclectic psychoanalyst of the Tavistock who was his first analyst. This is normally not mentioned since, after a short analysis with John Rickman, when he started analysis with Melanie Klein, he had to choose between groups and schizophrenia, and his choice was the latter. I think I wrote something some place… Foulkes definitely was much more holistic in his conception. He included himself in the group, something Bion did not do. However, this approach Foulkes learnt it from the organismic psychology of Kurt Goldstein, with who he worked more than two years, and the Gestalt psychologists like Ademar Gelb who also worked with Goldstein. I doubt very much that Bion ever had knowledge of the writings of Burrow, since he was too much interested in his own ideas…\u00b7 Alfreda comes back with the following reflections (Correspondence Third Stage<\/a>, pp. 16): \u201cIt calls my attention your conclusion that \u2018more I try to sell Trigant Burrow, more convinced I am that he is not on sale…\u2019 Considering the type of commitment Burrow demands of his readers, it is not surprising that he was maintained apart, ignored, misrepresented \u2014the social I-person presents so many attractive alternatives that don\u2019t require the concentration and challenge inherent to phyloanalysis. I have been very interested in getting to know the writings of Bion with his emphasis in the pathological dynamics of the group. I think that in our own work in social self-inquiry<\/i> we concentrate too much on the individual reactions \u2013in changing them through the recourse of feeling the tensional pattern around the eyes. Indeed, these are valuable observations (separately I will send you a short note I recently wrote en relation to an experiment I recently made en solitario<\/i>). But we can start to amplify our focus to include our reactions as members<\/span> of the wider group, to be able to detect, as did Bion without a doubt in the therapeutic groups, the operations of the social neurosis in a wider context. Do you have any opportunity for this type of work \u2014for example, with the impulse that you and I share of \u201cselling\u201d Trigant Burrow?\u201d<\/p>\n

And Alfreda goes on in her reflections: \u201cIt is interesting that the Symposium [of the SEPTG] of Valencia was on therapeutic communities \u2014will you contribute with a presentation? It seems to me that the Lifwynn experience adjusts well to this subject. As to your question in relation to the project Burrow of the Study Group in Group Analysis, you are right, I have not had any feedback to the letter we sent in March. Evidently, the project will not come out the way we thought \u2014I think that we were well advised in putting the food before them and if they are not hungry, what can we do?\u201d…<\/p>\n

In another message (Correspondence Third Stage<\/a>, pp. 20) Alfreda \u2014who is the only person in the world who not only understands the proposals of Juan but moreover has the experience and the motivation to take them on board\u2014sends a proposal for the Study Group in Group Analysis which they had commented over the phone:<\/p>\n