The AAGP in the Past in the Context of a Consideration in the Present and the Future

Invited contribution to Melbourne AAGP Conference.

It is confronting and a little surprizing to reach a certain age where one is considered a suitable representative and spokesperson for the history of an Association such as ours in the AAGP.  It suggests that I have some knowledge experientially of what has occurred or has been in the past and particularly over a long period of time.

In this context I can remember my younger view of my father, as not knowing much and being somewhat irrelevant to my life even though I was simultaneously aware at some deeper level that the opposite was also the truth.

In this context I will mention that Mark Twain once said,

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

So, therefore, it is with some trepidation that I present myself here to you today.

So, what can I say in the context of what I prefer to call the “History”, rather than “the past”, of the AAGP that is relevant to today?  The term, “the past”, suggests to me something static and of no further relevance in contrast to the complexity of the term “history” even though it can be considered gendered.

Before I continue I will say that I am grateful that Pia Hirsch has included in the latest “Newsletter”, number 5, a piece that Bill Blomfield wrote many years ago being meant to be an introduction to the history of the AAGP then.

Space limits what I can say here and some or all of you will be aware of some aspects more than others and some will have better recall around certain events.  This cannot be avoided and I do not want this space to simply be a roll-call of all those that have preceded us.  There may be some in the audience also who perhaps preceded my membership in 1989 who have a more direct appreciation of earlier times and I hope they and others can contribute to the discussion later.

The AAGP came into existence in 1973 which of course is nearly 50 years ago.  It was a very different world out there and also in terms of psychotherapeutic resources compared with nowadays.  The founders of the Association were male psychiatrists who were, with two exceptions, psychoanalysts.  It was a time when one could do more than one professional training in a career compared with nowadays when it is virtually impossible, although not quite, to combine formal psychoanalytic training with other trainings.  They included Frank Graham who was the Foundation President, Ian Martin, Bill Orchard, Bill Blomfield and George Lipton.  Later came George Christie and Ann Morgan, and many others including Sabar Rustomjee and Oliver Larkin.  Oliver Larkin conducted a group at Prince Henry’s Hospital for some years, I believe, with the support of Frank Graham and others which was a training opportunity for registrars.  Our membership seemed to develop well.  Again, I cannot, in this small space, document the contributions of everyone and inevitably some will, quite properly, feel forgotten.  That cannot be avoided. However, I will also mention Judith Eardley whom I came to know well had come from training in London and was a valuable addition but sadly she died ahead of her time.

An important feature was that early on it developed mainly from a private practice footing.  However, a development occurred at the Royal Childrens Hospital in Melbourne, which was significant and that was the Group Training Programme as it was called.  It began in the late 1970’s and 1980’s, conducted by a number of people over the years including Bill Blomfield, Ann Morgan and George Christie.  From this programme numerous interested people learnt about groups, conducted groups and continued to develop a nidus of group theory and practice including Rob Gordon, Campbell Paul and me.  In fact, most people in the Department of Child and Family Psychiatry at the time attended the Group Training Programme for some time at least.

In the early days conferences were held in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, and in some other locations, and clinical and theoretical papers where presented on aspects of group work.  It is clear that Melbourne was the epicentre for group training by virtue of the location of founding members and other factors.  Efforts were made to bring in others and hence the conferences in other capital cities which were very stimulating came into existence.  In Sydney in the early 1990’s, Peter Bott, who had come from London, set up what he called the Group Analytic Society (Sydney) but tensions developed between him and others.  Ken Mackey in Sydney was a generous and pleasant man who was on the scene too.  Tom and Mary O’brien and also Bronwyn Beacham  in Brisbane and Anne Noonan in Sydney were and are important figures.  Also, people in Adelaide made important contributions such as David Rampling, Bob Gillen and Graham Barrow.  Efforts were also made to make substantial connections with Europe and New Zealand and early on we were called the Australian and New Zealand Association of Group Therapists, I believe, until the membership of John Williams lapsed there in the 1970’s.  It is significant that all the founding members and quite a number of other early members were significantly trained in London or the U.S. in group analysis and/or psychoanalysis.  It is a notable fact that many early members contributed significantly also to the theoretical development of psychoanalytic group therapy and group analysis via publications in international and local journals.  Frank Graham published two very early papers, for example one in 1957, on Group Therapy in the Medical Journal of Australia.  This journal was the only vehicle for wide dissemination of scientific papers of that era in this country.  One of these papers has been placed on our website as have those of some others.

Major events were meetings of the Pacific Rim Section of the International Association of Group Psychotherapists (IAGP) in Melbourne which brought people from the US, Asia and beyond I think in 1991 or so, one of which occurred while I was overseas.  I went off to the Cassel Hospital in London from 1990 till 1993 and learnt more about groups and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.  Soon after I returned I joined the Committee of Management and in this role have come and gone a couple of times for me but nonetheless I have been a member of COM for a long time.

It was often said by, in particular, Richard Prytula, that the AAGP was run on “the smell of an oily rag” and “punched above its weight” these catchy phrases being references to there being such a lot achieved by so few people who were very busy in other areas.

I should say something about the importance of conflict and tension in the life of the AAGP.  Whilst originally it seems that relationships were quite congenial there reached a point when competitive tensions boiled over and this occurred especially in the early 1990’s on my recall.  At times, the Committee functioning became almost impossible and legal opinions and very formal ways of managing were resorted to by some (Joske’s textbook on committee functioning became invited or even required reading [1]).  In the course of these challenges, and also as a result, the Committee engaged Harold Bridger who was one of the significant pioneers at Northfield in England during the Second World War with Bion, Rickman, Main, Foulkes, DeMare and others.  I have written and published about these matters [2].  So, Bridger came to be a consultant if you like to our little group as he did for the Melbourne Psychoanalytic Institute and he helped us through difficult times.  He was also made an Honorary Member and was responsible for suggesting that “Sensitivity groups” be conducted on Sunday mornings of each state conference.

There have always been, in my experience, tensions within the AAGP although their intensity waxes and wanes.  In some ways it is easier to speak of past tensions rather than those in the present as can be the case.  There was a time when certain members wanted to open up the work of the AAGP so that it was less “psychoanalytic” and more “group therapy” and there were some who wanted to maintain the roots of our formation from its psychoanalytic seeds.  There were tensions between the three Eastern states at times for control and power.  Many of the foundation stones of our Association were formed out of a furnace or melting pot of very hard work and a number of people in some ways gave significant parts of their lives to its development.  The evolved constitution we now have and indeed nearly all our current principles and practices grew out of conferences and committee work by dent of thought and emotion and of course effort.  Training evolved such that Training Coordinators were appointed (eg. Chris Hill and me) and a Training Committee in Melbourne.  A number of excellent group therapists were trained.  Despite the training being coordinated from Melbourne, training events and visits from overseas identities occurred and also in other capital cities to devolve matters.  Visits of such dominating intellectual psychoanalytical giants as Dennis Brown, Malcolm Pines and Earl Hopper, all group analysts and psychoanalysts, were typical of our status.  Strong connections were developed with the European Group-Analytical Training Institutions Network (EGATIN) by George Christie and others putting us on the European and world stage if one includes our relations with the IAGP and we maintain a position on the top tier of training institutions with EGATIN.

Now all the founders have died and many of the early members too, or at least they have retired.  I want to say it is a very rich legacy and one that should not be forgotten despite obvious difficulties as mentioned already.  But, sadly, I do think this legacy is in the process of being forgotten in some ways.

In the formation of the National Training, as it is called, these origins and much of what I refer to above seems to have been forgotten as though little or nothing came before.  Sometimes it seems to me that the view that has taken root is that what existed before is seen as an anachronism, despite strong denial.  There are other losses to mention here and they include the fact that nowadays we have no active member of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society or the International Psychoanalytical Association who is also an active AAGP member.  Similarly, psychiatrists are now only a small minority in the membership and they previously brought significant and unique contributions.  There are complex reasons for these changes but they are nevertheless significant losses to the Association and we need to be aware of them and their significance.  I think it can be said that the number of practising group therapists is shrinking such that it is very difficult to resource, for training purposes, trained and experienced group-analytic therapists.  These are issues that are difficult to address but I would hope that this remains one of our core “raisons d’etre” as the AAGP.  And, if it needs to be said, I think very important work has been performed by the training committee and Committee of Management and I hope will continue to be carried out by our membership.

Earl Hopper has written, as have others, of what he terms “Equivalence”[3].  It is a term that denotes how events and relational patterns can be recreated in other contexts geographically and temporally.  This is a group equivalent of the individual psychoanalytical phenomenon, according to Freud, of repetition-compulsion, which can be a thwarted attempt to overcome an early and infantile trauma.  In “Equivalence”, through projective and introjective processes, events and dynamics that have occurred, perhaps in other nations, and sometimes at other times in history, can seemingly be reproduced unconsciously in the present or “here and now”.  Sometimes also conscious contributions are to be seen.  So, this is why for example, all over the Western world democracy is under threat and certain types of so-called strong-man leaders are on the rise.  It also contributes to the development of neoliberal philosophies in our political systems.  The point of all this is to say that without care and awareness and valuing of our historical experience we, that is the AAGP, risks repeating not just the good but also the bad and not learning.

An organization such as the AAGP that has as one of its foundation stones the centrality of a psychoanalytical basis to intrapersonal and relational life should not turn its back on history.  Psychoanalytical understanding is predicated on the idea that who we are now was largely determined by where we came from as children as well as via inheritance.  So, it follows that what we are now as an Association has developed out of our history.  Just as psychoanalysis requires the individual to re-experience via the transference aspects of the past and be aware, so do the members of an analytically based organization need to be aware of where and who we came from and how.

References:

1. Joske’s Law and Procedure in Meetings in Australia, 7^th Edition, by W.J. Chappenden(1982).
2. “The Northfield Experiments – a reappraisal 70 Years On.”Group Analysis, Vol 53, No 2. June 2020.  Pp: 162-176.
3. The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies, Volume 1, Ed. Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg(2011); page xlvii.