GASi President

Dear Fellow Members,

I’ve been in the shadow of the loss of one of our members, whilst writing this. Discussions on the forum about Derek Love’s death, have reminded me of his ambition to promote the ‘i’ in ‘GASi’ and to turn us into IGAS, the International Group Analytic Society.  We are still in the midst of understanding what internationalism means for us.

Inequalities constantly influence our relationships in GASi. Approaching Barcelona, we are thinking about how language differences create spheres of power and influence, restricting access and the ability to communicate. Most of us have been aware of the constraints which language has always placed on members’ relationships with one another; in Barcelona, for the first time a multi-lingual event, translation and mutual understanding will be a task, which all participants will be invited to share.

Of course, it’s not just barriers of language. As we extend our membership, and as interest and involvement in our events increases, material barriers inevitably inhibit free association and shape the ground on which we meet one another.

Bursaries are the established instrument we have used to help individuals attend meetings.  The GASi Fund Committee has done excellent work in raising monies for bursaries and other forms of support.  These schemes have enabled many to join events, who otherwise would have been excluded – a benefit to everyone, not just the individual beneficiaries.

Exclusion is a problem for everybody, not just for the excluded, because meetings are impoverished by the absences created.  So, it is right for all to be involved in addressing inequalities and in seeking to overcome them.

When we started the GASi Summer School, we introduced a new way of pricing the event.  We offered a two-tier fee, and registrants were asked to choose which they would pay.  An explanation was offered that this was intended to make the school widely accessible.

‘If you are able to do so,’ we said, ‘please pay the higher fee to support this end.’  Initially, there was some concern about how this would be interpreted, but, in practice, it has worked well.

The model is a form of voluntary progressive taxation, which recognises the different material conditions in which people live and work. It is part of the background to current discussions about the fee structure for the Barcelona symposium, where, making the symposium accessible, financially, is a priority. Another possibility might be that, at the point of registering, registrants are invited to make an additional donation to support a bursary fund.

In connection with these considerations, I was thinking about the annual Foulkes lecture, in London.  Naturally, we want this to be an international meeting, but the reality is that the costs of attending are very different for English members than for those making long journeys.  These travel costs represent personal contributions to the meeting. Is there any way that we could make a gesture, at least, towards re-balancing these costs? I wonder what London-based members think?

In joining a meeting, we support it – a group analytic principle, which, I suppose, is part of the motivation for joining GASi itself. The important thing is for us to recognise that confronting inequality, and its effects, is a shared task for all of us.

All the best,

David Glyn
dearjee@gmail.com