Further thoughts on current unrest in the Society (GASI)

The manner of the change of the basic structure of the Society that took place at the 2017 AGM needs further consideration, this time using some group-analytic theory.

This agenda item, the dissolution of the GASI Constitution as it had stood from 1952 to 2017 and the immediate adoption of a totally new constitution through a single vote, was at that AGM the very last item on a long agenda. The meeting I recall seemed convivial and was dominated by the ending of one Presidency and the declaration of a new President, so by the time this final though extremely important item was reached, almost all participants will have been suffering ‘meeting fatigue’. The nem con vote for this change will have been powered by the collective desire to get this meeting over with.

The area of group-analytic theory I am referring to is that found in the 1957 volume called ‘Group Psychotherapy – The Psycho-Analytic Approach’ by S H Foulkes and E J Anthony (1957).  This book requires some attention due to it going to a 2^nd Edition in 1965. This 2^ndEdition provided no explanation that it was a second edition and no separate introduction explaining the changes, of which there were very many (despite using the same introduction). The 1^st Edition virtually disappeared from reading lists and was no longer available after 1965 as a new volume. I found a used one in a bookshop and bought another via the internet. For the 2014 Symposium I worked with Karnac and the Society to republish a facsimile of the 1957 First Edition with a short Note of explanation.  It sold out that week.

One of the oddities of the 1965 2^nd Edition is that it left out a major piece of group-analytic theory that had appeared in the 1957 edition.  It was partly rescued by Pat de Mare in his 1972 book ‘Perspectives in Group Psychotherapy – A Theoretical Background’, (p.153,1972. De Mare, P) though almost always when mentioned in texts De Mare is credited with its origin. What I am referring to is found in the Penguin 1^st Edition (and its facsimile) where E J Anthony (in the chapter list he is credited with its authorship) introduces the tripartite concepts of ‘Structure – Process – Content’.  He describes structure in the following way;

‘Structure concerns patterns of relationships that are relatively stable and continuous. The therapists see into it form and organisation taking shape as configurations. He also notices the habitual roles adopted by the members which may not be unlike the roles they play in their usual environment. The structural or configurational analysis, as will be seen later, is especially important in the localisation of disturbances in the group.’

(p. 31, GPPA 1^st Edition, Penguin, 1957)

Anthony then explains that both process and content occur within this structure of the group; all 3 interact within any given context.  This piece of theory was written specifically about therapy groups, and like much other group theory needs applying to larger groups and organisations. I am now applying it to the Society itself.

What I wish to emphasise is that the matter of structure was completely overlooked when the new Constitution was adopted in 2017.  The Society’s founding Constitution was summarily dismissed. No discussion on this agenda item was recorded at the 2017 AGM, yet this was a radical change for the entire Society to undergo and subsequently to be deeply affected by.  No notice had been taken of this until David Glyn stepped down as President with no one having been nominated to succeed him. Only then was the elected office of President noticed to have been actually eliminated as a main element of the Society’s structure.

The following are some of the crucial changes made;

1. No office of President was formalised in the 2017 Constitution, nor how that office would be voted for, i.e. the structure to elect a President or Chairperson independently of the other members of the Committee.
2. Committee members are now all expected to serve as legally responsible Trustees.
3. The Constitution itself was one devised and offered by the Charity Commission, an already manufactured ‘off the shelf’ constitution that wholly ignored the history and traditions of the previous 65 years of the Society’s existence, why there might be an office of President, and how the previous constitution was itself structured and was the rulebook of the Society.

It is analogous to what happens to a country that is successfully invaded by a superior army in the belief that what supplants the old arrangements must inevitably be better than what existed for decades before. There have been several such invasions in the current century. Result – chaos.

Anthony added,

‘Structure concerns patterns of relationships that are relatively stable and continuous. The therapist sees into it form and organisation taking shape as configurations.

Much later he wrote,

‘The cause of the disturbance is the loss of the conductor and the disturbance is configured around the group’s relationship to the old conductor and the new one’.  (GPPA, 1957. P. 218)

If one replaces the term ‘conductor’ with ‘Constitution’ you will, I hope, understand what I am putting forward.

Structure allows and encompasses patterns of relationships that are relatively stable and continuous…. Form and organisation take shape as configurations.

What took place from 2017 onwards, without anyone apparently noticing, is that the underlying structure or configuration that had held the Society together, its Constitution and what flowed from it, was swept away in one ignorant, unreflective vote.  Neither those who had masterminded this vast change, nor any of us as members had taken any note of this.  What had taken 65 years to become a well-established structure and configuration –  a containing framework – that had underpinned the Society, departed without even a wave goodbye. No mourning. We have ended up with what Earl Hopper might have named as an example of a Fourth Basic Assumption, namely Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification. Incohesion entails an assumption that we are only an aggregation of persons, and this entails acting as a mass or as masses.  As with the other 3 Basic Assumptions from Bion, we lose our ability to actually think, to employ our collective observing ego, through a situation that we have fallen into. Hopper emphasises that I:A/M occurs through ‘failed dependency’ and is prevalent in social systems and organisations that have shared ‘traumatic experience’.

Anthony’s description of structure, content, and process has disappeared into the hole of bad editing that is the 2^nd edition (1965) of the GPPA. While resurrected by Pat de Mare in his 1972 volume (which itself is curiously ignored, yet is the first group-analytic text to be published that did not have S H Foulkes as an author – it needs re-publication), this area of group-analytic theory seems very largely ignored yet does need restoration into the reading lists of training courses throughout the world, and can be combined with Hopper’s 4^th Basic assumption to provide a description of group-analytic theory as to how to approach groups and organisations that become incohesive masses.

Kevin Power

Bibliography.

Anthony, A.J. & Foulkes, S.H. Group Psychotherapy: The Psychoanalytic- Approach. Pelican Books, London, 1957. 1^st edition.

Anthony, A.J. & Foulkes, S.H. Group Psychotherapy: The Psychoanalytic Approach. Pelican Books, London, 1965. 2nd edition.

De Mare, P. Perspectives in Group Psychotherapy – A Theoretical Background, London, George Allen & Unwin.1972.

Hopper, E. ‘Traumatic Experience in the Unconscious Life of Groups’ in Group Analysis Vol 30, No. 4. December 1997. publisher Sage & GAS(London)