Contexts Editor
There are times when being the editor of this publication entails carrying a significant amount of worry. It goes like this: the last one has just been published and now the pot is empty, so to speak…and worryingly, there’s no copy left for the next issue. At the beginning of March, we had only one paper, two book reviews and two obituaries, both still in need of writing. It’s been this way before, on more than one occasion, and then, remarkably, there’s action in my inbox and, one-by-one…miraculously and suddenly we have a rich and varied issue fall into place, almost randomly. I am very pleased to say that in this issue we have writing on: Contemplative Groups (Jale Cilasun & Lawrence Ladden); a Support Group for Doctors recovering from Long Covid (Vivienne Harte); the GASi online large group and the Sunday alternative large group (Aisling Fegan); Monogamy (Luis Palacios); GA reflections on Julian Assange and Gibraltar after Brexit (Arturo Ezquerro); Language Games and GA (Rita Sousa Lobo); Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Social Unconscious (Erik Andersen). Trust the group, I suppose.
Whichever way we turn, these days, there’s loss. In this global syndemic, whatever we do it’s there, seeping through the membrane of ordinary experience. It was ever thus, after all, life is a condition with 100% mortality rate. We know that the GA world is an aging one and, as a consequence, an anxiety that permeates our gatherings and exchanges is that of the need for renewal through the integration of new blood, new members, new ideas. Maybe, there are times when we are more aware of this than others and perhaps this issue of Contexts is somehow illustrative: Vivienne Cohen and Liesel Hearst, two of the early founding figures of group analysis, sadly both recently left us…we have tried here to honour and remember them. Additionally, as Vivienne Harte, the soon to be editor of Contexts reminds us, there are other losses that we as a community need to be keeping in mind, perhaps more than we do.
Peter Zelaskowski
peterzelaskowski@gmail.com
In memory of Deirdre O’Flinn
I both trained as a group analyst and worked with Deirdre O’Flinn. She was also my friend. She died on February 3rd 2021 through suicide. It was shocking for me and for many who knew her, especially her family and close friends.
I am writing this now in the Contexts Newsletter, partly in juxtaposition with the obituaries for Liesel Hearst and Vivienne Cohen. They are fondly remembered as women, friends and senior colleagues who made significant contributions to the field of group analysis and worked in the service of understanding the human condition. They were well known by many in GASi, the IGA and other institutions across the world. Deirdre was known for her dedication to her clinical work in the NHS in Oxfordshire and to her friends and family but perhaps her death may not have been reported on here as she is not well known. A smaller clinical world than that of either Liesel or Vivienne but she still gave to others.
My thoughts go out to her family who are grieving at the shock of her untimely death. A part of me wonders whether she would have been able to access help that might have persuaded her to continue her life had it not been for the Covid pandemic and the numerous lockdowns. I won’t ever know.
How many other colleagues and friends may be struggling with bleak thoughts and of suicide? How can we reach out to them or they to us? It is important to hold in mind those we know and care about in GASi and the forum, IGA and other institutes around the world. Loving kindness is deserved by all.
In memory of Deirdre I write below one of the poems read out at her funeral.
Postscript by Seamus Heaney
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Vivienne Harte
vivharte@btinternet.com