Contexts Editor

At the recent Autumn Workshop, during which I did a brief presentation on my work developing hybrid forms of the large group combining group analysis with art therapy and dance movement therapy, it became clear to me that something about what I have been doing is experienced as meddling, dischordant and disloyal. This impression was reinforced on hearing the criticisms directed at the workshop organisers for experimenting with the location of the GASi AGM within the body of the workshop. The defenders of the faith fight doggedly to protect an orthodoxy of theory and practice put in motion by the early pioneers. But things move on, they always do and always will. They must. Contexts becoming a digital publication in early 2016 was such an experience of moving on. It has been a painful and rocky transition. The mournful tone of many expressed something like, “if something works, why fix it?”.

With this in mind, I am glad to be able to welcome you to this new Contexts, now fully integrated and embedded within the GASi website. It is the result of much collaboration and hard work. I know that it does not resolve the matter of members’ wishes to return to the paper copy, however I think it is now much easier to read on all devices, PC, laptop, tablet and smartphone. My sincerest thanks go to our Brazilian designer Andre Pessoa for all his creativity and enthusiasm. I believe he understands us very well. I invite you to tell me what you think.

This fresh overhaul of Contexts comes with what I believe to be a particularly interesting and varied range of contributions. The 4th GASi Summer School in Ljubljana took place in July and brought together, as appears to be its culture, a mix of old and new generations of group analysts around the theme “Between Generations”. The articles and reports here included represent that diversity and communicate some of the challenges of cross-generational communication and relating. Can the old let go and hear the wisdom of youth and can the young hold on and bear the old as they mourn their lost youth and pre-eminence?

This time Contexts also includes an article in Spanish by Venezuelan dance movement therapist María Elisa Al Cheikh. She takes us into the training challenges she faces in the climate of the collapse of Venezuela’s economy and political structures. The ideas of Enrique Pichon-Riviere inform the group theory and practice at the heart of the training she organises. I invite you to put in the work of translating her work using programmes such as Google Translate. We now have the tools and means to be much more receptive to other languages. Plus, if we are to properly become international we need to move away from the complacent belief that English facilitates internationalism, because for many it is the fundamental barrier.

One area of contemporary life in which the young are so much more experienced and at ease is online life. This issue contains the outcome of a recent experiment in which a small group online forum of interested GASi members discussed the impact of the internet and our virtual forms of of relating on our our face to face groups. I am deeply grateful to all those who participated, particularly Rob White who took on the complex tasks of moderator/interviewer, as well as writer of a piece analysing and evaluating the discussion. This is the first of a series of interviews Rob will be conducting and writing for future issues of Contexts.

Finally, I would like to welcome Elizabeta Popovic to the role of Contexts Book Review Editor. So please write to her (elizabetamarcos@gmail.com) if there is a book you would like to see reviewed in these pages. Add to this Marcus Price’s work editing the poetry section, Free Associative Gifts, and, I’m glad to be able to say that the work of Contexts is now being shared among a growing group of collaborators, as I think it should be.

Peter Zelaskowski