Editors Comment

Viv Harte

Wow! 100th Edition of Contexts.

Congratulations to GASi and all members who have contributed over the years to make this a thriving newsletter.

I wonder if a celebration using football is appropriate, as well as orchestras, at this time. Football represents team and group effort and in the YouTube video below are some great goals along with backing (orchestral) music. Perhaps GASi/Contexts could be considered to have achieved some great goals over the years on behalf of group analysis.

As a way to mark this 100th edition of Contexts I bring you some of its history during 30 years by looking back at the June/July publications for 1993, 2003 and 2013. I have chosen aspects at random, though you might not be surprised why certain things got my attention. There seems to have been a move over the years from being mainly a space for comments from the MC, letters from members, and publicising upcoming events to one that also includes numerous articles both by members and non-members as well as a research column and a thriving art and poetry corner.

Much has changed but also some themes remain the same. Please feel free to comment.

Most editions of Contexts can be accessed via the GASi Website. At the end of this publication I include a copy of the original paper version of Edition No. 1 of Contexts from November 1993 as it isn’t available on the website.

1993    Anne Harrow and Sheila Thompson editors of the Bulletin and in November, Context

  • November 1993 Change of name of newsletter from Bulletin to Context decided at AGM in Heidelberg symposium. Context began as a hardcopy newsletter [name was changed to Contexts at the next edition]
  • Proposal put forward by the European Standing Committee to change name of GAS(London) to GAS International was voted out by European members. The name remained the same for a number of years.
  • Bryan Boswood, the President, in coming to the end of his first 3-year term writes a comment in his President’s Forward asking the membership to consider well how they choose the next incumbent.
  • Letter from the President of GASi to Dr Radovan Karadzic terminating his membership of the society due to alleged (at the time) war crimes.
  • Commentaries about the Large Group experience at Heidelberg symposium (Teresa Howard, Lizz Jupp).
  • Letters from members.
  • No articles, apart from a reference to a piece by Freud “Thoughts for Times on War and Death”(from SE Vol 14 pp 275 c.1915).

Archive for 2003 missing so I went to June 2004

2004    Tom Ormay editor of Contexts

  • In Tom’s editorial comment is included: “We have decided that Contexts would be our main medium for internal communication. Whenever we meet it becomes obvious, that we care for our society, and we have a lot to say to each other. Let us express more of that care on the pages of Contexts. It might take a little effort to express ourselves not by living words, but through written pages, but it does come if we try. We need not produce masterpieces, what we really think and feel counts.”
  • Discussion on the event:War and Peace. By thinking Beyond Protest and Opposition And discovering ways to disagree without antagonism. Teresa von Sommaruga Howard, Herb Hahn, Amélie Noack and Dov Hadari
  • Included in his letter to membership, Kevin Power, then the Honorary Treasurer states: “One major status that the Society provides for all who train – and I think that is a main plank of our membership – is a place and forum which stands outside of everyone’s transference to their training organisation. . . . The thing that makes democracy work is participation. . . . While my immediate concern is funding, there is an ineluctable link between funding and all activities in which the Society engages. And the Society is its members, or it is nothing.”
  • One article by Earl Hopper.

2013     Terry Birchmore editor of Contexts

  • GAS (London) has changed its name to GAS International (GASi). This happened at the AGM in London 2011
  • In Terry’s editorial he lets us know about our new archive. “History is important. It connects us with the past and with the legacies of the past in the present. It shines a light on where we have been and what we have become through the study of documents and artifacts left by people in other times and places. This issue [June 2013] introduces the Group Analytic Society archive, contained within the Wellcome Institute library in London. In essence, archives are a ‘community memory’. They tell us about past decision-making, people, events, and activities. Archives constitute ‘primary evidence’ – raw material that can be used for research to find out about the past or as a source of information about where we have been to inform our corporate memory.”
  • The continued invitation and struggle to receive copy for the newsletter.
  • A piece, mentioned in the edition, by Tom Main from the archive about Northfield included the following comment: “I want to pay my tribute in a rather personal way to Dr. Foulkes. It is quite true that I suppose he could be called one of my officers. He was never a Junior officer, either in rank or in spirit. I don’t recall ever giving him command or instruction, but I do remember being aware that it wouldn’t be possible to. I think he often gave me commands and instructions but so well disguised that they were not noticeable as such. I don’t think I ever put him on a charge or accused him of insubordination, though I think that both would have been possible because he contravened so many of the ordinary laws of thought at that time.”
  • Three articles.
  • Creation of first Quarterly Members Group.

In this the 100th edition of Contexts we have reflections from past editors of Contexts; Anne Harrow, Paula Carvalho, Terry Birchmore and Peter Zelaskowski.

We also have articles discussing Oxytocin and relationships, group work with people affected by eating disorders, research into social dreaming, group analysis and artificial intelligence, historical development of GA in Australia. And we have some wonderful art and poetry contributed by members.