Contexts Editor

“….for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”

W.H. Auden: Musée des Beaux Arts (1940)

Some time ago in the mid-80s I spent a week on Icaria, a Greek island in the northern Aegean. It had no airport and was only accessible by boat. As a result, it hadn’t yet been discovered by the mass tourism that rips the soul out of beautiful remote places. I was there with Mike and Aristotelis, two mates with whom I’d been sharing a Vauxhall squat at the time. We bathed in a river and slept on a beach, which we would then have to ourselves for the remainder of the day. At the time, as I had it explained to me by a local, Icaria was a communist island and had been for decades. It was probably the most gloriously peaceful place I’d ever visited. We befriended Stavros, a local fisherman with no front teeth, who invited us to a community fundraising festival in an inland mountain village, the purpose of which was to raise funds to repair a local church and extend a local road. We drank too much retsina, ate stringy boiled goat and tripped over ourselves and others while dancing Kalamatianos, the Greek circle dance. At the end of the day we were driven down the mountain by a local in his truck – I remember Mike, too drunk to stand, falling to the ground like a sack of spuds as we leapt of the truck. Later in the week there was a particularly hot but windy day. In a strangely deluded way, I remember believing that somehow the wind would protect me from getting burnt. I woke up the following day and my back and shoulders were on fire and my face the colour of lobster. Those were times when nobody talked of the dangers of the sun, but I really felt I’d done myself harm. Stavros took pity on me and let me take shelter for two days in a small fishing dwelling he owned. My relationship with the sun has never been the same since and I imagine, dear reader, you might be thinking that this reads as nothing but a misadventurous piece of Icarian myth making, but you’d be wrong, my skin is still mottled by the burn scars. You might also be thinking that this is a tale of hubris finding its nemesis, as it always must. In which case, you could be right. I’ve learned to keep my distance from the sun and to enjoy the Mediterranean shade.

I have no doubt that heat and humidity will be issues during our Barcelona Symposium in September 2020, as they were during my one attendance at the GASi Summer School in a sweltering Prague in 2015. This year in Rijeka, around the themes of tolerance and diversity, the Summer School appears to have been a rich and challenging experience for the many that attended. As well as two of the papers presented there, this issue contains a very interesting range of reports on the event, ranging from a report by the Summer School organisers to one written in a poetic form. I am very grateful to all the contributors but above all to Tija Despotovic and Bessy Karagianni for their help in encouraging people to write about this very important event in the GASi calendar.

The March 2017 issue of Contexts (C75 https://groupanalyticsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/C75-Final.pdf) was guest edited by Christine Thornton around the theme of reflective practice – definitely one of the highlights of my time as Contexts’ editor. It appears that a good deal of the content of that issue has now been included in a recent book The Art and Science of Working Together, also edited by Christine. This issue includes a very original review of that book by Sarah Hanchet, along with a piece written by Earl Hopper in October for the launch of the book. Christine has also generously sent me a piece of written dialogue, between herself and two of the contributors to the book, reflecting on the experience of writing on reflective practice.

I am also once again grateful to Harold Behr for inviting us to think about boredom and to the Group Analytic Dictionary project for the latest GA concept taken from the GAD archive, this time Lars Bo Jørgensen and Søren Aagaard on dreams.

FAG

I’m sorry to announce that Marcus Price, after 2 years in the post, has decided to retire as Editor of Contexts’ poetry section ‘Free Associative Gifts’ (FAG). I am very grateful to Marcus for having breathed so much life into FAG and for his serious, playful and original approach. If there is anybody out there interested in taking on the position of poetry Editor for Contexts, please get in touch.

GASi News

In this issue, we’ve introduced a GASi News section in order to communicate some of the current new initiatives or pressing concerns of the society. This new section, alongside the Calendar recently added to the GASi website and the Management Committee Archive in the Members Area, will provide another avenue for keeping in touch with past, current and future Management Committee and GASi activity.

Peter Zelaskowski
peterzelaskowski@gmail.com