Memory of Giovanni Losito

Giovanni Losito, an internationally renowned Apulian Group Analyst, passed away on 25 April 2023 at the age of 77. A welcoming and competent professional, endowed with profound sensitivity and humanity, he has been the point of reference for numerous patients and groups and for generations of Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Mental Health Professionals and Teachers.

He was able to convey the value of clinical work and human understanding of the other together with the importance of reading the complex institutional dynamics.

He dedicated his whole life to the study and clinical practice of Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis, without ever losing the enthusiasm to learn and the curiosity to learn new things, to get involved and to make himself available to those who asked him for help, support, comparison, cultural exchange.

Member of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the A.P.A., Washington D.C. (Section V, Psychologist- Psychoanalyst Clinicians, New York) since 1992. Full Member of the Group Analytic Society, London (then GASi), since 1987. Member of the International Association of Group Psychotherapy since 1986. Clinical Member of the American Association of Group Psychotherapy, New York since 1990. Ordinary Member and Supervisor since 1992 of the C.I.G.A. (Italian Center of Group Analysis) and since 1999 of IL CERCHIO – Italian Association of Group Analysis, federated with C.O.I.R.A.G. (Confederation of Italian Organizations for Analytic Research on Groups). Founding member of ARIRI, Bari, School of Specialization in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy until 2013. Founding member of I.Ga.Bo (Institute of Group Analysis Bologna). Professor at the School of Specialization in Clinical Psychology of the University of Bari. Co-founder of the Bari branch of the School of Specialization in Individual, Group and Institutional Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of the C.O.I.R.A.G.

His skills were really vast. His training started with classical studies in his hometown, Barletta, and with attendance at South Portland High School, Maine, USA, which initiated him into the international dimension and into the experience of different human, social, family contexts (he considered the American family who had hosted him and with whom he had always kept in contact, such as his adoptive family, who had given him American parents, brothers, nephews).

He graduated in Rome in Letters and then in Psychology, combining the interest and love for literary, poetic, aesthetic, cinematographic culture, with an interest in the profound dimension of the psyche, of the love of bonds, arguing that there cannot be health without creativity and without concern for oneself and for others.

Since the early 1970s he had uninterruptedly developed his training through contact with colleagues and exponent groups of international and Italian psychoanalysis and group analysis: group analysis with Alice von Platen, of the Tavistock Clinic, group analytic supervision with Augusto Ricciardi (collaborator of the Grubb Institute of Behavioral Studies in London and of the International Foundation for Social Innovation in Paris, formerly directed by Gordon Lawrence), group supervision in Rome with Malcom Pines of the British Society of Psychoanalysis (1976), psychoanalysis with Professor Gemma Corradi Fiumara of SPI (Italian Psychoanalytic Society) and then with Professor Luciano Leppo, SPI teacher, and psychoanalytic supervisions with Professor Pier Francesco Galli, Dr. Marianna Bolko and Professor Fritz Morgenthaler. The theoretical and technical psychoanalysis seminars with George Moran, Marianna Bolko, Anton Obholzer, Robert Mitchell, Peter Fonagy, Sami Alì, in Bologna (1990s), with Gordon Lawrence, Robi Friedmann and Jerome Groopman in Milan, with John E. Gedo, John A. McDougall, Joseph Greenberg, Robert Holt, Giorgio Sassanelli in Rome.

Giovanni Losito was known in the local scientific community for having been first in the rankings in the first public competition held in Puglia for the Mental Health Centers to be established, introduced by national law n. 180 of 1970, and for having resigned after a short period, because he had already recognized the destructive aspects of power in public institutions. Devoted entirely to the free profession, however, he had made this experience the fundamental motivation for the work of training professionals both inside and outside the health and social institutions. With Alice von Platen he introduced in Puglia the group analytic practice in its various forms of the small therapeutic group, the experiential group and the Analytic Large Group. He then conducted numerous training-intervention experiences in diversified hospital and territorial health institutions, educational and training institutions such as in various universities and in the Bari Conservatory. “Something he would not want overlooked or forgotten was his Marxism: He could do class analysis as well as group analysis (cit. Dick Blackwell from GASi Forum, Topic “Death of Giovanni Losito”).

His distinctive trait was the simplicity with which he restored to everyone the sense of limit and impotence with which one is measured in life, together with a deep attention, full of curiosity and interest in the world of the other. He was able to grasp in everyone the feeling of belonging and identity, without this representing a constraint, but simply a resource.

Giovanni was always available to help young colleagues with doubts, uncertainties, editorial curiosities, articles to write, understanding of social events. Those who had him as a teacher remember that he arrived tired from a heavy trolley full of books that he made available, inviting them to read and encouraging them to nourish themselves not only with science but with travel, exhibitions, films, love, things important in life.

In the last few years, since the pandemic, he assiduously participated in online events, both national and international. With IL CERCHIO he was one of the conveners of the Large Group, together with Earl Hopper, Carla Penna and Simona Negro, at the event “From Crowds to Communities in Dialogue. The Large Group in Contemporary Group Analysis“, as well as being co-author of the report published on Group-Analytic Contexts (98 issue December 2022) which you can find here: https://groupanalyticsociety.co.uk/contexts/issue-98/.

He was also a constant member of the Alternative Large Group (ALG) hosted online by Indian colleagues during the pandemic (still running on a weekly basis).

For those of us who knew and appreciated him as a Trainer, Group Analyst, Colleague, he was a real genius loci, a precious and unforgettable gift.