Blasts from the Past – Previous Contexts Editors
On Being Asked and Asking
Comment by Anne Harrow
I have been asked to write for this 100th issue of Contexts. I was on the committee of the society and was asked to be editor. I did not seek the post but I accepted .
I was editor of the magazine from June 1993 – September 2001. Sheila Thompson agreed to edit with me and so Contexts began.
Previously it was called the Bulletin, but I thought that sounded too military. Elizabeth Foulkes , who I think had started the Bulletin accepted the name change gracefully, although I don’t think she entirely agreed. The first name I thought of was the Matrix, but there was a rather indignant objection as this was already the name of another publication. I then chose Contexts and that was what it became and still is.
I lived in Leeds then and Sheila lived in London. I would come by train to London for committee meetings, sometimes staying overnight, often returning on the 11.p.m. train.
Sheila would come to Leeds when we met to edit, sitting at my kitchen table.
I had friends at Leeds Polytechnic in the graphics department, and they generously agreed to print the magazine and send it to London. It was parcelled up and sent by motorbike to Daleham Gardens to be distributed.
I had many conversations with Elizabeth Foulkes and sometimes stayed with her when I went to London. She spoke about how much the Group Analytic Society meant to Foulkes. She told a poignant story about how, when the Institute was thought about, Foulkes was not very involved. On the day of its inauguration Foulkes said to Elizabeth ‘Do you think they are going to ask me?’ They did of course, but the Society remained Foulkes main love.
It too remained mine although I became a member of the Institute.
We had for a time to move out of Daleham Gardens, that was a strange experience . When Werner Knauss became President he negotiated a return to Daleham Gardens for which we were all grateful. We came home.
Because of my own house moves I have no copies of the early Contexts but my memory is of plenty of material, people were eager to write and we never had difficulty producing an issue. It wasn’t all smooth sailing of course but I think we managed to keep Contexts as an important voice of the Society.
Following a change of President it was decided that Contexts should be produced digitally. I favoured hard copy while appreciating that times were changing. Then Sheila became ill and so our editorship ended. She died in 2001.
My last editorial was in June 2002. It is on line and may fill in some of the blanks here.
I regard it as a very rich and satisfying time in my life and I am grateful to have been unexpectedly asked to remember it here.
I wish the Society well for the future, and the future of Contexts.
I don’t know if 100 issues qualifies Contexts as an antique. It is certainly something of value and quality so maybe. I hope it will continue for another 100. Whether in this form, who can tell?
Technology continues to advance with AI being the latest innovation in literature. Thinking about the future I have wondered whether ChatGPT would have produced more fluent and plausible prose for me.
I will never know, I haven’t asked.
A brief comment from Paula in her email that eventually reached me (unfortunately numerous emails didn’t arrive for some reason):
“Unfortunately, it’s not possible for me to write something. I’m sorry. It was really a very important and rich experience. Many thanks for the invitation”.
The GASi Opera
Comment by Terry Birchmore
I received a phone call some time in the evening in the Autumn of 2006. Unexpectedly, and out of the blue, Kevin Power was on the line. Now, I had only previously, to my knowledge, met Kevin at a GASi event in Sunderland when he had engaged in a robust argument with another Group Analyst in which it appeared that there had been something of a long-standing feud between them (and, as you will understand, this was probably representative of wider group dynamics at the time). I had trained in the 1990’s in Manchester but at the time I had no links to any other Group Analytic colleagues other than those in the Northeast of England.
So, why was he calling? He was asking me if I would like to be a co-editor of Group Analytic Contexts with Paula Carvalho. Why me? I had had no editorial experience. My only qualification was that I read widely and, I suppose, have a curious set of mind, interested in the gaps between our knowledge and practice. How was Kevin to know that?
His proposition? It was clearly due to Paula not wanting to edit on her own – very understandable – and the need for GASi to therefore appoint someone else as a co-editor. It seems that, as always, no-one was willing to step up to the plate, so hence the phone call to a relative unknown.
However, after a few days of reflection and email discussion between Kevin, Paula, and myself, I decided to accept and therefore began my time as co-editor and then full editorship. We took over from Tom Ormay who then went on to edit Group Analysis.
So, I then entered an interesting period of my life professionally (you will also understand that I had many other interesting aspects to my life). Firstly, discussions with Paula re. the direction we wanted to take in editing Contexts. She was keen on exploring the differences between trainings in different countries and the effects of cultural differences. I was keen to try to focus on clinical, case-centred articles rather than what I perceived as the rather abstract and self-enclosed fare that the Journal was serving up at that time.
Then, I was introduced to the Group Analytic Society (not GASi at that time) committee meetings which were regularly convened in London. These meetings ran from 9.00am until 5.00pm on Saturday and 9.00am until 3.00pm on Sunday. A marathon! Thank goodness that I was able to escape to the opera sometimes in the evening….
But, talking of opera…. Hmm, the dramas I had witnessed on the stage on a Saturday evening sometimes seemed to dwarf the dramas in these meetings. I came to the realisation that a full Group Analytic Training does not necessarily solve all interpersonal issues and problems (including my own I must declare). Divas are not restricted to opera. I will say no more about this.
[I am delighted to include below two of Terry’s choice of Operas as representing aspects of his time as editor and on MC]
Flower Duet: Lakme and her servant, Mallika, are picking flowers near a river and sing about the flowers they are collecting together. Who is Lakame and who the servant?
Largo al Factorum: on having too many responsibilities – Contexts, website manager, Forum manager.
However, I should say, also, that there were some other good people on the committee who were interested in working to promote our charitable objective of promoting the interests of Group Analysis rather than operating from mainly self-promotional motivations and who were excellent in their focus and abilities.
My collaboration with Paula was, I think, very creative. I liked Paula. We worked well together, and I appreciated our differences in approach which, I hope, served to create a more interesting publication – Paula obtaining contributions from Europe, myself more from the UK.
Sadly, Paula stepped down from co-editorship in 2011 and I then became the sole editor until 2014 when Peter Zelaskowski took over.
I had, when I took over the co-editorship, had the ambition of turning Contexts into something of a rival to Group Analysis, the Journal – creating something less in the air, less abstract, and based in practice rather than what Contexts had previously been, a sort of newsletter, of lesser significance, and somehow less relevant. I think that Paula and I, and then I, realised something of this ambition, I hope. However, towards the end of my editorship, voices were raised about the relevance of Contexts and whether it was relevant and whether it should be shelved. It is beyond my pay grade to wonder if these were the voices of envy, or anxiety about the upsetting of previously established roles. Or they could have been legitimate questions about the need for two Group Analytic publications which may have overlapped and taken contributions, potentially, from each other. These questions may still be around.
So, in retrospect, what did we do well and what might we have done better? In the absence of Paula, I can only answer for myself.
As always, we might only be able to look back with the insight of experience and time. I went on, after editing Contexts, to edit the Psychology Section Review for the BPS for 6 years. My focus there was to seek as many international contributions and different perspectives as possible from across the world. I even managed to get some Group Analysts invited to the Section Conferences without too much opposition from the Committee. These articles often challenged and hopefully disturbed the narrow scientific world of the BPS. However, I think that I managed to curate an interesting and significant publication from the doldrums of previous years.
My regret, in editing Contexts, was that I was not brave enough. In asking for views only from the Group Analytic Community I was guilty of only reinforcing the self-enclosed, self-referential mindset that often characterises Group Analysis. I was, indeed, when I asked attendees at GA events to contribute their thoughts and writings about these events, impressed by their thought-provoking perspectives, and these were, I thought, more interesting, arresting, and significant when they came from outside of our Group Analytic community. I remember vividly their reflections on the in-fighting that occurred in small and large groups at Group Analytic Society events. Shame might have been an appropriate word to use when I read these submissions.
To end: I think that any profession that functions in an enclosure, a way of being that does not allow or consider other areas of knowledge or thinking is doomed to become irrelevant.
Looking back from the 100th issue of Contexts
Comment by Peter Zelaskowski
Thanks to Viv for having the idea to use the occasion of the 100th issue of Contexts to take a moment or two to reflect on the slice of history, starting in 1993, covered by 100 issues. I will try to say a little about my experience in the role, as well as something about some of the challenges I faced.
But first, just to acknowledge having felt in the early days a particular affection for Contexts (by the way, originally called Context – the s was added for the second issue) largely because co-editor at the start, Sheila Thompson, had been my experiential group conductor at Goldsmiths several years previously for two years during my training. Her quiet, sensitive and gentle modelling of the conductor/facilitator role was such a gift that I will always carry with me.
On becoming Contexts editor…
It was some time in 2013 when I saw the announcement in Contexts in search of a new editor. At the time, and for many years prior, I’d been periodically having thoughts about escaping back to the UK, from my home in Barcelona, and here was a way of achieving that goal, at least that’s how it felt…albeit indirectly. “Excited and daunted” (C63 editorial) were the words I used to describe how I felt leaping into the unknown of this radical new direction in my life. In a later editorial, that early “leap into the unknown” had morphed into Icarus’ leap skyward with his dodgy wing-gear, created by his father, enabling his escape, but ill-equipping him for flight. I became, from C64 in June 2014 to C93 in September 2021, the sole editor and, despite having been given the fine and generous support of the then Contexts editor Terry Birchmore, during a one-year apprenticeship and despite being married to an experienced and highly skilled book editor, who helped me out of some tight corners, I virtually always felt like I was winging it. But, as I learned later, on the demanding unremitting rocky GASi highway of experience, that’s the nature of the job. If I knew then what I now know, would I have taken it on?
…and joining the MC
The thing with getting involved with GASi though, maybe the key to making sense of and surviving the whole adventure, is that of course, how else could it be, it essentially involves joining a group (actually groups) at the beginning of which one inevitably is asking oneself “what the f@%& have I got myself into?!!”. Initially, as a co-opted member, I was only expected to attend the GASi management committee (MC) every second meeting during the period of Terry’s departure – and they met less frequently in those days, but it wasn’t long before I got voted on to the committee by the membership and was a full member attending every meeting. In addition, more or less around that time, it was decided that it would be a good thing for the editor of Contexts to participate in the Editorial Committee of the Journal Group Analysis. And so on and so forth and before long I was up to my proverbials in the sticky stuff of work, that stuff that needs doing…and tends to be relentless. And new committees form…the Online Communications Committee for example, chaired by, naturally enough, the person with responsibility for the website, a job that Terry had been doing and which I also had taken on. And, of course, it was agreed at some point down the road that the website needed modernising…and I accepted the challenge… I could go on!
The Journal
The relationship with the journal often felt thorny, at worst participation in the editorial committee simply felt irrelevant to the job, frustrating and galling, at best an occasionally helpful collaboration. On very few occasions did I receive copy rejected by the journal’s peer review process. Given the often anxiety laden and frustrating struggle, which I would say is core to the editor’s job, to generate/receive/have available sufficient copy for the current or next issue, these occasional gifts felt like the meagre crumbs falling from the table of the rich. On the other hand, this generated in me a determination to really get into the commissioning side of the job, so that Contexts could be fully able to generate sufficient copy of its own. Which mostly it did, mainly due to there being enough people, both new and experienced writers, wanting to put some writing out there without having to traverse the controlling discomforts of being peer reviewed. Contexts is a good and safe space for first time writers and for the early development of authors and ideas. I also see Contexts as a space for initiating connections on the edge and outside of group analysis. In addition, many contributors during my time were either non-members or from other or related fields of the broad world of the therapies and working in groups. This, however, became the focus for a lot of political debate and attention and at least 2 motions at GASi AGMs seeking to revert Contexts to a space for members only, for internal exchange and dialogue between members. Here is my response to the motion presented at the 2020 AGM:
This motion appears to me to be aimed at hollowing out both the publication and the role of editor. The publication, because without the contribution of non-members, Contexts would lose an important source of its regular content. In particular we receive much vital feedback about our events from non-members, people who often are wondering about joining us – they tell us something very important about what we do. So, without this perspective from the outside, a huge gap would appear and the newsletter would lose much important content, content that makes it viable. The editor’s role would become an administrator role, rather like what has happened and is still happening to the role of the forum moderator. Is this what we want?
When Foulkes set up the early publication wanting a space for exchange, conversation and dialogue between members and colleagues, he of course had no idea that the forum would one day facilitate such a possibility for immediate transnational dialogue. While Contexts of course is a part of that exchange, it is no longer what it is centrally only about. The thing it provides for the society is an outward looking publication that reaches out and links to a wider world, including other approaches, other modalities, other colleagues whom we want and need to engage with. A members’ only Contexts closes that door. Contexts currently has very open guidelines for publication, the spirit of which is to encourage people to write and contribute and to not over-define for people what they might write.
The motion talks of an editor making decisions alone, in isolation, “public face of GASI is left to the interests and persuasions of its one editor”. This strikes me as a deliberate misrepresentation and in no way reflects the reality. There are significant checks and balances. The editor takes part in three sub-committees (Ed Comm, MC & OCC) and reports to one of them, the MC. The Ed Comm plays a part in scrutinising and helping develop the publication…I think it could do more in this regard. There are collaborators and regular contributors. It is of course not a peer reviewed publication, it’s not at the elite, intimidating end of the publishing spectrum, which can tend towards homogenizing, tidying up and excluding people’s writing and creativity. Contexts is rather like the chat function in Zoom, providing a way into the conversation that is open and less intimidating and more accepting of the original impulse to write. As a consequence, the range of contributions and contributors is wide and would be significantly narrowed by this motion. Also, the goals of developing diversity and internationalism would be significantly curtailed. Should you decide to pass this motion, Contexts would become inward looking and increasingly too much like the forum and all its attendant dynamics and would lose much of its viability and uniqueness within GASi’s life.
The strange case of Sage
Between June 2013 and September 2015 (10 issues in total), for reasons that were never made clear to me, the Journal’s publisher, Sage Publications, in addition to publishing the hard copy paper version it was contracted to produce, also published a digital version of Contexts in its website, alongside the journal, as a “supplement”. It wasn’t until the GASi MC decided in 2015 to convert Contexts to a digital/online only publication, thus saving the Society 5,000 pounds annually, that this “mistake”, as the Sage representative put it, was discovered and brought rapidly to an end. When I became editor, I’d assumed that this additional digital version was what we paid for, but apparently not, it was a freebie that Sage inadvertently gave us. Nonetheless, the 10 issues from that period can still be found on the Sage/Group Analysis website.
Going digital
In my mind, perhaps the greatest controversy of my stewardship was the end of the paper copy…the thing you could hold in your hand, write notes in, chuck in the bin, burn, lose, etc. While many expressed their sadness and lack of enthusiasm for this (inevitable?) change, it was also clear, from communications I was receiving, that for others it made Contexts much more accessible. I drew a lot of fire…I remember feeling surprised at the AGM held during the Berlin symposium in 2017 at the anger in the membership towards me as editor, over and above other members of the MC and not about this issue specifically. The subsequent focus on Contexts during at least 2 more AGMs I believe had something to do with accepting this modernising transition.
The first issue (C71) of 2016 became the first digital only issue of Contexts, one hundred percent produced in-house and no longer by Sage. While the GASi website was being modernised, during that period, and before we were able to design the current digital platform inside the GASi website, for a while (10 issues in total) Contexts was published on a self-publishing platform called Yumpu. The version of Contexts that you now see embedded in the GASi website was put in place 18 issues ago (C82) in December 2018.
And finally…some gongs of gratitude
When Viv took over it was such a relief to let go and to have back in my life that Contexts shaped chunk of time and space. Viv, many thanks, I like what you are doing with Contexts, a fresh creative and expressive energy.
And finally, in my final editorial, (C93) in September 2021, I outlined some of the highlights of my time as editor and handed out some gongs of gratitude. Here’s a link (one of the toys and tools of digital life) to that parting piece, should you care to read it: Contexts Editor | Group Analytic Society International
Cheers! Here’s to a 100 more!