Partition, Boundaries, Brexit, and Borders at Sea: Developments and Challenges for Group Analysis in Ireland
‘Without the occasional renewal of memory
and regular rehearsal of meaning,
Place itself founders into shapelessness
and time, the great amnesiac, forgets all.’
Tim Robinson: Connemara
As I write, the loud bangs and rockets of Halloween are shattering the night. This, a most ancient festival of Celtic origin. In modern times it has increasingly been played out in the guise of an imported, consumerist monster from the US, but it has a more ancient ancestry. Its Gaelic name, Samhain, refers to a time when the vail between here and there, present and past, the living and the dead, fused for a night, and passage was possible between altered states. History is never really ‘past’ in Ireland and old dead ghosts still walk and talk with the living on this night. This year their conversation turns to the border. It has come back to haunt us again. This time it is floating somewhere in the Irish Sea.
In this, the centenary year of the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament, a state was partitioned from the rest of the island, and then as now, without boundary or border. Ireland’s partitioning was a chaotic, confused process. It was confused, surrounded by violence, and forced population displacement. For the following four years, a Border Commission sat in private trying to agree where the line would be drawn, only for both governments to declare in 1925 the “issue resolved”. But the Commission did not resolve the border and ‘leave it as it was’. Its report remained unpublished for what all sides interpreted as its failure. Silence and confusion have lingered in the accounts of partition and even at the time all sides agreed ‘it would be better no-one should ever know accurately what their position would have been’. The Boundary Commission remained unpublished and hidden from public view until 1969, a year into the return of the repressed in the form of a violent reaction against calls for civil rights. The partition of Ireland, like many of the traumas suffered on this island, continues to be dynamically active and enacted through our social unconscious. IGAS and IGA UK have just had the second event in a series of four, to mark these events and process their implications with the unfolding Brexit. Unable to attend these events but aware somehow of their implications in my practice, I have accepted an invitation to a fortnightly reflective space with colleagues and members of the Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations. Trauma covers this island and its diverse traditions like a wet cold blanket and if one takes the time, its coldness can be felt in the bones. I can remember my grandmother telling me stories of an ever earlier trauma. It was about her grandmother walking from Co. Galway to Dublin. She was fleeing the famine of 1845 to ’48. She survived but millions did not.
In April 1995, a group of graduates from the Dublin-based training course came together to establish the Irish Group Analytic Society, IGAS. Their aim was to support and develop the work of Group Analysts, and to connect with the wider community of practitioners of applied group work throughout Ireland. The course had been originally staffed by IGA London. As a trainee on the course, I recall that ‘the English and the Irish’ theme was often to the fore, sometimes acknowledged as a defence to keep at bay the horrific destruction of sectarian terror. As the membership of the overseas training team withdrew, the course became independent of the IGA. However, a condition of transfer was that an Irish Institute of Group Analysis, IIGA, be constituted. It was to provide a framework for the training course, located in the School for Psychotherapy at St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin. To my knowledge, at the time there was no formal relationship established between the IIGA and IGAS, no boundary commission established. In my opinion, the result was higher demands on personnel in the Institute, many of whom were training analysts, and the experience of abandonment by the Society. On the other hand, the Society’s committee membership consisted mainly of recent graduates and students on the course. As a member at that time, I certainly lacked the confidence to ‘dismantle the partition’ be more proactive in negotiating a new relationship. The wider community of Group Analysts were invited and did respond to the need to build bridges and reconnect, to forget a new, more dynamic border of roles and responsibilities. What was it about the transition from IGA to IIGA that transformed and cut across the natural lines of communication? The use of partition does not reflect well on the complexities of relationships, even if these are non-relationships or antagonistic, there is still a linking. The traumatic breaking of bonds has cut deeply across our mental landscape.
In the intervening years the Society and Institute has continued to engage, and although difficult at times, this engagement brought change. It resulted in a de-constituted IIGA and an IGAS established Training Standards Standing Committee, TSSC, with the purpose of promoting and supporting the ongoing development or training standards for group analysis in Ireland. A good deal of TSSC’s initial work has been clarifying and agreeing roles and responsibilities with IGAS and the training course. It now approves and recognises the delivery of Group Analytic training programmes. It approves the submission of applications for accreditation and manages their re-accreditation process every five years. Its challenges include working towards an annual review with the Board of the School of Psychotherapy, (and other trainings) to discuss developments in group analytic training. It also faces the challenges of ensuring and supporting the ongoing development and promotion of group analytic principles and processes of group analytic trainings. It advises the IGAS committee on the management of the panel of Readers of qualifying papers as required. This work is driven by a commitment to a clear, transparent, and accessible process that is available to all qualified members.
The other dimension arising from the establishment of IGAS, is that of connecting with the wider community of practitioners of applied group work throughout Ireland, has gained renewed impetus within IGAS. A survey last summer of members working through applied group analysis drew a good response. A working group is in the process of bringing its findings back to the society and providing IGAS with the grounds for further action. This is a restoration of sorts and is in accord with the intentions of the early Group Analysts who were deeply embedded in education and other NGO’s. The challenge is going to be to find an accommodating home for the wider community of practitioners, but especially a home for our own.
Noel Keane