Contexts Editor
Two important considerations in the telling of most histories are where to begin and what to include. The history of this Special Issue of Contexts could have many diverse starting points and include a multitude of strands. For example, the idea to do this originated out of the intention of continuing with the plan to dedicate an issue of this publication, prior to the event, to the host city of the GASi Symposium … just as we did with the Berlin Symposium. So, when the 18th GASi Symposium became the 1st Online Symposium, the Barcelona Special Issue fell ignominiously, like myself last summer (remember?), into a roadside ditch. However, I am very grateful to Maria-José Blanco, who I had originally approached to guest edit the intended Barcelona issue, who held on to an alternative proposal that was also around at the time: a bilingual Special Issue of Contexts focusing on GA in the Spanish speaking world. My 30-year friendship with Maria-José could be another strand of the history, as could the 21 years I’ve lived in Spain.
I arrived in September 1999, my daughter 3 years-old and my son only just born, and full of naïve colonial GA energy and intent. In the beginning it felt like fate was gifting me a head-start: there’d been an EFPP group conference in May that year[i]; then later in the same year an APAG[ii] (Asociación de Psicoterapia Analítica Grupal) annual congress[iii] where I met José Miguel Sunyer, the then president. Despite this early good fortune, I nonetheless failed, at least that’s how it felt, for quite some time in my attempts to join the local GA group[iv]. Then along came the IAGP Mediterranean conference[v] in Barcelona 2008, which at the time felt like a landmark moment. During that event, as was the tradition in the GP forum, of which I was a member at the time, some of us, including Malcolm Pines, Robi Friedman, Haim Weinberg (GP forum moderator), dined out together, on a beautiful Barcelona Spring evening. Without doubt, one of the highlights of that conference was a keynote conversation between Malcolm Pines and Joan Campos, the man often spoken of as the principal historian of GA, who translated Foulkes and was there when he died in 1976. It briefly felt as though historic ties already existed between Spain and the GA world. Through this experience, it became clear to me that both José Miguel Sunyer and Joan Campos were centrally important linking protagonists. This was later-on reinforced when I worked with Joan through my involvement in Metafora’s Art Therapy Unit[vi] – we went to him for a year as a team for supervision. His passion for GA and his idealism were absolutely clear. He was brim full of GA stories that he loved to tell, stories which, it should be said, my art therapy colleagues were less enthusiastic to hear about then myself.
Later on, when in late 2016 I was invited to explore beginning to develop the Barcelona Symposium, it became clear to me just how remote I felt from GA in Spain. I had a lot of bridge and trust building to do. The process of doing this was a profound and daunting challenge. GASi wanted to re-establish and re-invigorate old and seemingly faded ties with Spanish GA. It was a deeply political process which at times felt like a colonial struggle. Added to which, the afore-mentioned 2008 IAGP congress had resulted in significant financial losses for the local organisation and thus set a painful precedent in our work – here was another large international organisation wanting to impose itself and English on the Spanish.
What seems clear to me, as a I look at the index of the contributors to this issue, is that the lost Barcelona Symposium, only partially reflected in the Online Symposium, is here very present in this bilingual Special Issue. Luis Palacios – president of SEPTG[vii], who was central to the organisation of both the Barcelona and Online events – and Maria-José have put together a rich collection of pieces which in some way helps to compensate for what was lost to GASi when we were forced to cancel an event in Spain that would surely have brought into focus the ideas and practice of group psychotherapy within the Spanish speaking world. I am deeply grateful to both of them for their extraordinary hard work in bringing about this edition of Contexts, which I believe makes an outstanding contribution to connecting different and divided parts of the world of group psychotherapy.
Finally, out of necessity, this issue is presented in a way that enables the reader to have a clearer overview of the work done. We have as many as 20 authors, with each article published in both English and Spanish. With so many contributions we decided to publish the issue in 2 parts. You will receive the second part in a week. Very few of the translations have been done by a professional translator. Most have been machine translated and then revised. While I believe this provides a good enough reading experience, I think that in the future, it will be important to reflect on the need to fund professional translations, if we truly wish to include authors from other languages.
Notes
[i] European Federation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, Group Section Congress – Barcelona, May 1999, “From Fragmentation to Cohesion.”
[ii] https://www.apagnet.net/
[iii] 3er Congreso Nacional de la Asociación de Psicoterapia Analítica Grupal – Sitges, Spain. November 1999
[iv] Zelaskowski, P. (2014) Adrift on the Med: My struggle to join the group. Group Analytic Contexts. Volume 47 Issue 1, March 2014. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0533316414521345e
[v] International Association of Group Psychotherapists’ 3rd Regional Mediterranean Congress, Barcelona, “Un Puente Llamado Mediterráneo”, February/March 2008.
[vi] https://www.metafora-art-therapy.org/get-to-know-us/
[vii] https://septg.eu/
Peter Zelaskowski
peterzelaskowski@gmail.com