GASi President

“Don’t forget to write your Introduction for Contexts, please,” comes the familiar message from the Contexts Editor. Each time, it is a call to address a task that I have not exactly forgotten but which has not quite been in my mind.

It reminds me of the experience, in relation to individuals with whom I am working as therapist; on the point of meeting them I’m unable to summon up any sort of memory of the person until the moment when he or she appears, when a whole picture materialises in an instant. It’s reassuring, then, to recall Bion’s injunction to enter the therapy session without memory or desire; however, it’s not something that I wish the other person to be aware of, when it happens.

Recently, two young people have spoken to me in therapy about their distress when they realised that, seemingly for the first time, they had failed to think about a loved one whose death they have been mourning.  They reported feeling tremendous guilt, about letting go of something that it was their duty to preserve. They were reflecting an unconscious belief that we keep one another alive through remembering and being remembered.

For those of us fearful about our capacity to forget, the group is a source of comfort, because remembering becomes a shared task.  The ritual of the session, regularly punctuating time, creates an impression of something immortal to which we can cling, and which holds us.

The MC members play a particular part in the process of keeping GASi alive. In the process of organising events and taking financial decisions, we are also playing a particular part in the process of holding the Society in mind. Our shared, different pictures of GASi are a small part of the greater picture held by the entire membership and beyond.

When I was newly elected to the Presidency, a long-time member approached me to let me know that, unless I adopted a particular course of action, GASi would fall apart, riven by its internal contradictions. ‘How are we going to hold things together, in the presence of so many conflicting ideas of what constitutes the Society,’ I wondered?

At the moment, the MC is preoccupied with the forthcoming Annual General Meeting, in May. Like other such bodies, the MC tends to approach an AGM with some anxiety; it’s a moment when our picture of the imagined society has a formal encounter with that of other members.  Somehow, it always seems to be a testing encounter.

David Glyn
dearjee@gmail.com