Presentation, discussion and development

Svein Tjelta

Introduction

I’m proud and excited to open this new section in Contexts, presenting tastes of the work that has been going on since 2011. After our President David Glyn made a general call for contributions to the newsletter, I had the idea of taking the opportunity to publish a concept or two in each issue, taken from our database, making it a subsection for concept presentation and development. Hopefully this will increase interest in our project, as well as adding to the quality of Contexts on a regular basis.

I’m hoping for fruitful responses from members/readers. I’m also grateful to Peter, the editor of Contexts, who generously opened up space for this in Contexts. The idea is to present a group analytic concept[1], or two, from our database where they have been accumulating, initially assembled for a blog called GAD (Group Analytic Dictionary). We invite members/readers of Contexts to engage in discussion in the issue following the presentation.  We hope this would be a way to keep GA concepts alive and thriving, as well as developing.

In consultation with Peter, I have taken responsibility for deciding on the first GA concept to get us launched, by selecting Göran Ahlin’s text on the Matrix.

At the study day after the Foulkes lecture Dieter Nietzgen had on Foulkes some years ago, one of the presenters told us he had done a little survey in advance of the study day, asking candidates at GA courses if they had actually read Foulkes’ work. Not many answered in the affirmative. To have the opportunity to read conceptual development from a field’s beginning and onward, and discussing it therefore, seems very satisfying.

History leading up to this step

A word of background might be in order. It was Søren Aagaard and Robi Fridman who in 2011 were discussing a term they differed on, and they decided to look it up. To their dismay, they could not find any group-analytic definition of the term and agreed that there should be a dictionary of Group Analysis. So, they agreed to try to make one online, using the Wikipedia encyclopedia model.

They involved their respective institutes; The Institute of Group Analysis in Copenhagen, Denmark and the Israeli Institute of Group Analysis, and set up a blog. They started a series of seminars debating concepts at the institutes, and people started to write definitions and posting them. In addition, workshops were held at conferences in Group Analysis, both locally and internationally.

The initiative generated a great burst of activity in the early days, but it seemed like enthusiasm faded as time passed. Nothing much happened. People stopped writing posts for the blog or commenting on them, and interest crumbled for attending work-shops at conferences. Only some faithful followers came. Robi was busy as president of GASi and Søren also at the time became indisposed. The work seemed to come to a halt.

Then Dieter Nietzgen, Søren and Lars Bo Jørgensen, together with the scientific committee of GASi, planned, a workshop at the Winter Workshop in London in November 2015 to look at the status quo. I was asked by Søren to be there too. The work shop draw much interest and many opinions about if it would be possible to get the ball rolling again. People had different experiences with international collaborations on intellectual work of this kind, and although different voices were heard it seemed like there was a strong valence towards the opinion of the impossibility of the task. I was, however, asked by Robi and Sue Einhorn, head of the GASi scientific committee, to consider taking on the task. My credentials were an interest in the project and experiences as the Main Editor of the Nordic Journal for Psychotherapy Matrix for many years. I initially said no, because of what looked like the endlessness scope of the project. When asked to reconsider, when Carmen O’Leary and Marina Mojovic from the Management Committee joined in, I now accepted and was made principal editor for the project.

There were a series of tasks in need of attention if this was going to work in our opinion:

  1. The three of us making up a managing editorial committee (MEG – later joined by Carla Penna) soon found out that the Wiki principle open access process did not work as intended, leaving all up to autonomous dedicated writers and leaving very little reward-systems inherent. So, we agreed that this project needed the involvement of a lot of people on an international level.
  2. To do this we needed to build some organizational structures and implement them by gaining experiences.
  3. First, we defined a mandate to secure the autonomy and intellectual freedom from the project that was going to be a project under GASi, being web-host and maybe using other resources from the organisation.
  4. The blog was moved to GASi web pages and administered from there. This was done by Peter Zelaskowski.
  5. Instructions for writing, production-lists and so on, were elaborated.
  6. We had a consultative members’ hearing in the beginning that gave us some advice.
  7. Having in mind the fading activity on the Danish blog we decided to try to make the project more proactive by asking certain persons to write certain terms for us.
  8. We started to look for fellow editors internationally to join us, and help finding authors to write definitions. Currently there are editors in many countries.
  9. We also began inviting in advisors and consultants to assist, mostly as reviewers.
  10. The editors tried to build a local group in their respective context (LEG) that could study and work on terms.
  11. We then had the organisation in place: MEG (Managing Editorial Group), CEG (Central Editorial Group) LEG (Local Editorial Group) and DAG (Dictionary Advisory Group). The challenge was to get this working together as a system with limited means of contact and face to face communication, in an open group-analytic non- leader-centric way. E-mail and Skype became the most used means for this, as well as editorial meetings and continued workshops at conferences. Later, I added editorial meetings whenever we had a chance to meet.

Gradually, the standstill resolved itself and new concepts/definitions began to be written. However, it soon turned out that we actually were working at two projects at the same time: a) The assembling of a group-analytic dictionary on the blog (GAD) and b) The production of a paper/print version.

Some of the arguments against the possibility of fulfilling the project centred on what seems like the limitless amount of terms in use, and the different ways they are used. There were protests against making official defined definitions of dynamic terms. The problems of crystalizing out “clean” Group Analytic concepts when the same terms were adapted from other theories and practices, developed in different cultures and languages and so on.  A Lingua Franca of Group Analysis seemed impossible to obtain!

Results, after changes since 2015 by the principle of trial and error

After the move of the blog to GASi, 3,5 years ago, we have managed to assemble about the same amount of entries that were gathered in the Danish blog. All concepts are available in the GASi web pages. After our editorial meetings and the sharing of responsibility for Group Analytic concepts, we have several definitions on the way with new authors volunteering to write. Taken together this is a satisfactory development.  The project started as an open access blog in Copenhagen and it took a while before we understood that this somehow continued with the move to GASi. As we decided not to keep the concept definitions open to the world, we moved away from the Wikipedia principle of openness, and redefined the online project to be a concept database. We are also now planning to put all the concepts together in a compendium for internal use by institutes connected to GASi. There will be reprints, adding new definitions of concepts. Hopefully this will be available for sale at the Barcelona Symposium, or directly from GASi.

Introduction of the first concept presentation

Göran Ahlin is first out with his definition of the Matrix concept. He should be a familiar name to many of us, being active in the Group Analytic world for many decades in teaching, training, treating and supervising and not least in writing. He wrote his Phd. on the subject of the Matrix. He was one of the founding fathers of group analysis and group psychotherapy in Sweden. He has also been, and still is, active in many international bodies and organizations.

The matrix is fundamental to Group Analysis and was developed by Foulkes himself. It therefore seems natural to start with this concept.

In the September issue Rachel Chejanovsky will write on the concept of mind in Foulkes writings with an introduction by Carmen O’Leary. The interested GASi member can also visit the GASi website and have a look at all the concepts assembled there at: groupanalyticsociety.co.uk

Enjoy!

[1] For every concept presented, permission has been obtained from the author for publication.

Svein Tjelta
svtjelta@gmail.com