Queer Perspectives in Group Analysis Special Interest Group: Some Reflections

It feels strange to write about a group that has only been meeting for the last 6 months. But as the focus of this edition of Contexts is LGBTQI+ issues, it seems an opportunity to try and capture the experiences and processes to date of our recently formed SIG, Queer Perspectives in Group Analysis (QPGA).

Background

The QPGA SIG was launched in November 2023, born out of discussions during the Belgrade Symposium that year. There had been a growing frustration, in many of us, over several years about the lack of presentations on the topic of sexuality and gender at previous symposiums, along with the sense of a continued and disheartening conservatism on this topic in our field.

 There has seemed to be an inertia or indifference in our field to the development of a theory of gender and sexuality that attunes with group analytic principles and values. This apparent resistance has felt bound up with some reluctance to examine our own hetero/gender normativity in Group Analysis and its institutions, including GASi. These shortfalls in group analytic theory and practice seem to have kept us out of step with social changes in many of the countries where group analysis is practiced and this has been puzzling and painful for those of us whose sexual and gender identities locate them outside the mainstream of normativity.

That group analysis has been slow to address its own normativity in relation to sexuality is striking, if only because group analysis is regarded, or regards itself, as a different, perhaps more radical approach than most other psychotherapies, particularly traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The gap is also striking given the much greater current social awareness and openness about LGBT+ identities, necessitating a revision of long-held assumptions. Another change is the shift in institutional attitudes to training and the acceptance of homosexual candidates onto psychotherapy courses. This has transformed in recent decades from the exclusionary policy of the mid- to late- 20th-century to an open, inclusive 21st-century approach. The result is that there are now (relatively) many lesbian and gay group analysts who are active and influential members of the group analytic profession, diversifying and strengthening the professional community. Yet, the group analytic approach to sexuality and gender lags way behind these developments.(Nitsun 2022) 1

In this gap, Daniel Anderson, Sarah Tyerman and I sought to create some dialogue at the Belgrade symposium drawing from our own interest in sexuality and gender, as queer group analysts approaching the topic from queer-informed perspectives.

Dan’s presentation drew on his recent, and important book (The Body of the Group 2022 2). As part of his talk, he offered enlightening insights into how homophobia is rooted in the history of our field. Familiarising ourselves with this history, though difficult, feels vital, not least to understanding our foundation matrix, and making sense of what resistances and prejudices may continue to play out in the social unconscious of our field and organisation.

Sarah and I ran a workshop that focused on how we might start to apply contemporary thinking such as queer theory in the clinical situation. We looked at the contentious issue of trans identities and the significance of language. We thought about the likely experience of LGBTQ+ individuals in a mixed group (as well as LGBTQ+ conductors), and explored how the ‘colossal forces’ of hetero and gender normativity might manifest in the dynamic matrix.

Dan presented alongside Maja Brikić who also delivered a talk on gender identity. Their session was inundated with a great many interested participants – so much so that many ended up sitting on the floor. Sarah and I found that the intersectionality of our attendees around country of origin, racialised, sexual and gender identity, engendered a very alive engagement with our themes.

From these experiences we learned that there is an appetite and interest in this subject in GASi, and that discussions that reach across international and other borders are particularly enriching and exciting.

So, from there, the idea of creating an international forum to explore sexuality and gender through non-normative approaches began, with Dan and I deciding during a walk back from one of the large group sessions that we would ‘make it happen’.

Aims

The primary aim of the QPGA SIG has been to engage with others in an ongoing dialogue that challenges hetero and gender normative attitudes towards gender and sexuality.

In fulfilling this, the group offers a reflective space where members can interact and exchange experiences, feelings, thoughts, and ideas whether personal, professional, clinical or theoretical.

The group also aims to help further our collective theoretical understanding of group analysis in relation to queer theory and other ‘outsider’ thinking (such as feminism and the black feminist concept of intersectionality). It is our hope that the group might also provide a platform for research and/or writing projects for those interested in exploring this further.

And it has also been our aim that the dialogue can work across international and other borders to explore the shared and different experiences of sexuality and gender from a range of intersectional positions.

Structure

Our first session was on 22^nd November, Sunday at 4pm GMT. And for now, sessions continue to be on a Sunday and broadly every 4 weeks. The sessions are 90 minutes, and we meet as a median group for that duration.

The numbers in our groups have ranged so far from 18, as the largest group, to 6, as the smallest. We have had members join us from Australia, Japan, USA, India, Europe, Ireland and the UK.

Our meetings are organised around GMT – partly because Dan and I, the convenors, are based in the UK and this is broadly a manageable time zone for most of our members. However, to be globally inclusive we alternate our times, meeting at 10am (GMT) one month and then 4pm (GMT) at the next.

As the alternating times continue, the group seems to have settled into this rhythm with the boundary moving from one time zone to another to include different parts of the world with a slightly differing membership depending on the month.

That this set-up in terms of the time zones and our leadership (we are both white and UK based), reinforces the white Eurocentricity of group analysis, is something that we are conscious of. While this is something that can be explored in the group and has begun to be touched on, we are also aware we potentially may need to create more flexibility in the group’s dynamic administration, structure and leadership roles in order to try and decentralise the power base in the group.

At the same time, recognising and exploring power, privilege and position and the intersectionality of the group membership is also essential in examining of our themes of oppression in relationship to queer identities and I hope will continue being part of the dialogue.

Themes

The regular and rhythmic change in membership has created a changing foundation matrix and therefore shapes the dynamic matrix of our group sessions. This has so far given a feeling, at the start of each session, of a new group beginning. This has led to thoughtful conversations about members needing (or not) to introduce and reintroduce themselves in relation to their identities with inevitable and interesting associations to ‘coming out’ or staying ‘in the closet’.

There has been, at times, uncertainty expressed around legitimacy of membership– most often it seems by those who identify their sexual orientation as heterosexual.  These feelings are understandable, but also perhaps exacerbated by our description as a group for ‘queer group analysts and allies’ on the GASi  webpage which may have encouraged a sense of hierarchy in the membership. The term ‘ally’ also emphasises the position of the ‘other’ and this was raised in our first session. It seems to me now, however, that experiences of ‘otherness’ or if not ‘outsider-ness’ may be being held by SIG members who don’t identify as queer and this ‘reversal’ is an area of interesting exploration that we have begun to touch on.

Despite these questions arising from time to time – and it feels perhaps less so as the group has settled – I have felt moved and heartened by personal disclosures and stories that have been offered up in our sessions. Sometimes these have been unexpected, and this feels a helpful counter to unconscious and conscious assumptions and projections we can perhaps all be prone to.

As the group and conversations have developed, we have started to think about how queer approaches can be liberating for all of us, problematising aspects of our gendered selves as well as our sexual identities and that this is something that can potentially be experienced and shared, regardless of how we identify. For me this has felt a testament to the value of engaging in a queer approach that interrogates these fixed positions and singular identities and encourages fluidity and flexibility in how we relate to our own sexualities and genders and therefore those of others.

We have thought about the universality of homophobia as well as transphobia and that these are internalised states, part of the social unconscious, and sadly unavoidable for any of us regardless of sexual/gender identities and political views.

We have thought about the location of disturbance in relation to sexual and gender minorities in our groups but also how members with overtly homophobic and transphobic views may also host unwanted hostility and shameful feelings on behalf of others and ourselves.

We have shared some clinical dilemmas, for example how much and whether we intervene in a clinical situation to support someone in sexual or gender minority. In other words, asking questions such as; “what can we do” and “how do we do it” and “is it helpful to do it?”

Shame is a theme that has surfaced in various forms in the group. Some SIG members have shared feelings of shame about their own country’s attitudes to LGBTQ+ people and this is potentially an area of exploration about location of disturbance in relation to geopolitics. It raises questions about what legacies those members are left with and leaves me with thoughts about whether those of us from more supposedly “tolerant” societies benefit from the shame of our colleagues. I also wonder therefore if some of the silence on this topic in GASi has been connected to these disparities and related projections and projective identifications.

Shame has also been touched on in relation to HIV and sexual practices. Stuart Stevenson has recently written an excellent and important paper on gay men and extreme sexual practices (group analysis 2022 3) which was mentioned in one of our sessions. By exposing these harmful practices Stuart has opened a potential dialogue about aspects of LGBTQ+ lives that could feel shameful but nonetheless very important to speak about. This raises a question – for me – about what other aspects of the LGBTQ+ experiences we keep hidden because of the potential for shame whether this is bound up with our own silence around this subject.

Our silence has been another focus for discussion in the SIG. The scarcity of publications or articles focussing on sexuality and gender from an LGBTQ+ position has been discussed. Notable exceptions to this have been published works by Dan and Stuart. Very recently a new book (Intersectionality and Group Analysis 2024 4) includes a chapter from Dan on group polyphony and transgender 5 and also one from Reem Shelhi who writes powerfully about her experience as a “non-female conforming woman” and with a minority sexual identity as part of her “kaleidoscopic” intersectionality 6.  Suriya Nayak in her paper on racialised misogyny also refers to the “invisibility and silence about women of colour, women constructed as having a disability, non-binary, queer and transwomen”7 These writings have made and are making significant contributions but do feel few and far between. In the QPGA SIG we have begun exploring the internalised as well as institutional forces that might make it difficult to use our voices let alone make them heard.

Connected to this, safety has been another important theme in the SIG. In our first meeting survival anxieties were particularly heightened. While different factors may well have been involved, including the fragility of an early group, it is perhaps not surprising that threats of attack and rejection will be potentially enacted in a group engaged with themes such as homophobia and transphobia.

Anxieties about the survival of the SIG were also expressed early on, with references made to similar attempts (in the UK) which failed and succumbed to anti-group phenomena. In our first session there seemed to be a palpable concern that the group may not be able to succeed. In the short time that we have met it has been reassuring to see this concern dissipate though it will inevitably raise itself again at times.

Trauma, as we know, is easily replicated in the group process and experience, and violence is very real for LGBTQ+ people whether experienced directly or as an ongoing threat, or from the past, or in relation to counterparts in other parts of the world or from history (many LGBTQ+ people feel a strong trans-generational link to those who lived queer lives before them). It is important that we remember that in the world today:

• 70 countries criminalise same-sex relationships.
• The death penalty for same-sex relationships is either ‘allowed’, or evidence of its existence occurs, in 11 of these countries.
• In more than half the world, LGBT people may not be protected from discrimination by workplace law.
• Most governments deny trans people the right to legally change their name and gender from those that were assigned to them at birth.
• A quarter of the world’s population believes that being LGBT should be a crime 8

In thinking about safety, we have also thought about how ghettos can be necessary but then also exclude others and can become closed systems, suffocating and unhealthy. It has felt important that this SIG was not set up as a ghetto, hence our efforts for inclusivity from the outset.

We have just begun to think about gender intersections and power that men hold over women. As the group grows, we will also hopefully be able to start to think about queer identities in relation to other intersectional identities of race, disability, class, culture, and ethnicity.

Speaking of intersectionality brings me to the limits and bias of my own subjectivity which I will end by acknowledging. My own intersectional identity is that of a gay/queer cis-gendered female, white and able-bodied. I was born and am based in the UK and from an upbringing that was both middle class and poor. Inevitably, my account above is shaped by these intersectional identities as well as many other factors – including my role as convenor. The observations I have made (and Dan offered me some comments as well) and my reflections are my own and not intended to represent the group as a whole.

Contact

Anyone who is interested in interrogating fixed notions of gender and sexuality and feels they would personally, clinically or professionally benefit from thinking, feeling and sharing with others around this topic, are most welcome to join our SIG and be part of this ongoing dialogue.

Please contact either clairebarnes.therapy@gmail.com or danieledwardanderson@icloud.com

References

1) Nitsun, Morris 2022 ‘Book Review: The Body of the Group: Sexuality and Gender’ in Group Analysis Vol 55 Issue 3

2) Anderson, Daniel. 2021. The Body of the Group: Sexuality and Gender in Group Analysis. Phoenix Publishing House

3) Stevenson, Stuart. 2024. Gay men and extreme sexual practices in the era of chemise and online digital dating platforms. Group Analysis (online)

4) Nayak, Suryia and Forrest, Alasdair eds 2024 Intersectionality and Group Analysis: Explorations of Power, Privilege, and Position in Group Therapy, The New International Library of Group Analysis

5) Anderson, Daniel, 2024 The Body of the Group: Sexuality, Transgender and Group Polyphony. In Intersectionality and Group Analysis: Explorations of Power, Privilege, and Position in Group Therapy eds Nayak and Forrest

6) Shelhi, Reem 2024 This is How I Came to Live in Stuckness: Intersectionality, Oppression and ‘Affectivism’ as a Group Analytic Intervention. In Intersectionality and Group Analysis: Explorations of Power, Privilege, and Position in Group Therapy eds Nayak and Forrest

7) Nayak, Suryia 2021 Racialized misogyny: Response to 44th Foulkes Lecture, Group Analysis vol 54 issue 4

8) Stonewall’s Website, Statistics from Stonewall’s International Work and ILGA World, 2020