Co-chairs Forward

Dear members,

During the last four months many occasions to talk together, discuss, and reflect on GASi dynamic processes have been available to us all. We thank all the participants of the Seasonal Gathering, the Reflective Members’ Group, the General Meeting, as well as the speakers and participants of our workshops.

All these meetings and encounters allowed and helped us in our role as co-chairs to expand and deepen our thoughts.

Thinking and preparing for the next GASi Symposium, which will be hosted in Athens in 2026 by the Institute of Group Analysis Athens (IGAA), mythology is always in our minds.

Reflecting on time, space, dynamics, change, continuity, personal identity it is inevitable to make a reference to Theseus, the founder-hero of Athens.

Theseus, after killing the Minotaur, returned to Athens. His ship became an object of veneration. The ship was travelling for years and over time different parts of it were damaged and replaced. During its exhibition in Athens and its use on special religious shipping events to Delos, other parts were reconstructed or substituted.

Over the years each single part was replaced at least once. The story tells that it is Theseus’ ship, but here the paradox starts. The philosophic paradox of substitution refers to the question of whether an object which has been replaced in all its parts, is still the same object. The ship of Theseus was repaired over a long period of time, little by little. This point raises a further question: in which particular time was this ship no longer the ship of Theseus? Which piece of the ship is the basic part that, with its substitution, will determine the point at which the ship is transformed into something else? What about its identity? Is the ship still recognized as Theseus’ ship after the reconstruction? Is its image exactly the same and with the memory of it?

Centuries later, after Plutarch’s question about whether the ship is still the same after its pieces are entirely replaced, Thomas Hobbes posed another question: what if all the original planks were collected and reassembled to build another ship? Is this reassembled “new” ship still the Theseus ship?

The philosophical inquiry into whether the nature of an object is still the same after changes through time, or if the object has a different entity introduces the concept of continuity and the metaphysical question about whether the objects essential qualities remain the same despite changes, as Aristotle suggested. Human species remain the same because each individual, in his mortal essential quality, is substituted by a new one with the same essential quality of a human being.

Identity is linked to memories. Each individual needs to feel as a container of a single experience, from birth to the present. This awareness is the key of change and the basis of identity. Ascertainable links historically correlated to the source in the past are the connection to the present.

The collective identity as GASi members is related and connected to the core identity of GASi, its history, its values and purposes, its culture and capacity for innovation.

Thank you Andre for thinking about us and giving us the idea.