Co-Chairs Forward
Dear members,
This is our first forward as co-chairs.
The new management committee (MC) is trying to create a new way of working together and a new structure, in the absence of a president.
The new management committee began its activities immediately after the AGM on 15th October 2023, two months ago.
The MC consists of four members from the previous MC: Alice Mulasso, Francesca Bascialla, Viv Harte, Marit Joffe Milstein and Julia Borossa (as ex officio and editor of GA Journal); and four new members: Paul Bener, Dominico Agresta (Mimmo), Reem Shelhi and Sanja Janovic.
This management committee is the most diverse membership GASi has ever had. This committee was born with the beginning of a difficult and bloody war between Israel and Hamas immediately after the brutal attack on Israeli civilians on October 7th. While many other areas of the world experience conflict and war.
As group analysts, we know that the context and timing in which a group is born, and new participants enter it are critical in the development and creation of communication in the individuals and the group. As stated in the war matrix, we all meet with extreme feelings of hatred, rage, and rising and increasing anxiety and destructive emotions. And suffering, despair and hope too. Anyone on the forum may have witnessed the threatening expression of communication that developed there.
As new trustees of GASi, we see our role as thinking slowly, in times when there is a push for quick communication, reactions, and extreme actions. As group analysts we believe in dialogue, eye contact and reducing hatred and we are at the beginning of this process and moving slowly forward.
We received several letters of complaint and demands from GASi members, some you can read in this current issue of Contexts. We took them seriously, and decided to establish a sub-committee, mandated by the Charity Commission, tasked with drafting two policies, one a code of conduct and the other a policy on equality, diversity, and inclusion. In addition, we informed all members of the organization that we were working on a survey regarding the written communication spaces online and we asked all members to complete it and return to us. You will all have received the survey by now so please do respond and send your answers back to us. It is important that we know what all our membership thinks about this issue.
In the last year of the activity of the outgoing committee, we created an additional online space, the Reflective Members Group (RMG) in order to meet in-between the Seasonal Gatherings. The 1.5 hour RMG is intended to create a space for open dialogue between members and with the MC. This year we continue offering this space and hope to see many of you there. All dates are on the GASi website. The first RMG of 2024 is Saturday January 13th at 2 pm UK time. We hope many of you will attend.
The MC sees itself as holding the future for all of us and despite the difficult times, we are planning the following meetings for this year:
Foulkes Lecture and Study Day in May in London
Summer School in July in Turin, Italy.
The last exciting and instructive meetings at our symposium in Belgrade are still in our memory. We want to continue to believe and adhere to the dialogue approach and the reduction of hatred.
We wish to embrace all our friends who live in war zones and suffer from the echoes of war around the world.
We wish all our members happy holidays with their families and communities.
And we hope for a happier New Year that will bring peace and safety to all the citizens of the world and for GASi.