Toward a History of Group Analysis in the North of England
Origins
UK Group Analysis, like psychoanalysis, has been traditionally centred in London. It was only in the later 1970s that psychoanalysis, in the form of group analysis, began to move out of the centre and into the rest of the country. London group analysts were asked to run courses in other venues, first in the Midlands and then in the North. These courses, and others, have made a crucial difference in the hundreds, or even thousands, of NHS and private practice therapists’ understanding of neuroses and psychoses. It is to the credit of the IGA that it nationalised its trainings, eventually, with a block model, imported from Europe, that facilitated full training, both nationally and internationally.
In Group Analysis North, we trace our origins to Dr Barbara Dick. Barbara Dick was a Northern psychiatrist. She was small in stature and lively in nature. She was particularly interested in people. She was also interested in science.
The spark of group analysis in the North of England came from Barbara’s association with Dr Franz Greenbaum. Dr Greenbaum was a contemporary of Foulkes. He had come from Germany in 1939 and, like many Germans coming to Britain, was interned on his arrival. He joined the NHS in 1948. Barbara met him when he worked at Salford Royal. He was her Jungian analyst. Groups must have been a mutual interest, however, because they started to run their first NHS group together in 1960.
Tragically, Dr Greenbaum died suddenly in the first year of their group together. This must have been traumatic for Barbara and for the group. However, Barbara was also an experienced psychotherapy practitioner. She had previously developed her group skills as a trainer with Marriage Guidance, now called Relate. She continued the work that she had started with Dr Greenbaum.
In 1970, Barbara was identified as the only practitioner of psychotherapy in Manchester by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It sounds a lonely distinction. It was, perhaps, not as lonely as it sounds because Barbara also began to open a line of communication between the early practice of group psychotherapy in Manchester and the early group analytic movement in London. In making the London contacts with SH Foulkes, Elizabeth Foulkes and others, Barbara and Susi Shafer, her friend and colleague, started the Manchester – London conversation.
Barbara first appeared writing in Foulkes’s GAIPAC (Group Analysis International Panel and Correspondence) in 1970. We know that she attended meetings in London with Susi. She reported to the Group Analytic Society about her use of observer / recorders, which is now considered idiosyncratic. (GAIPAC, 1970).
It would be interesting to know what the pioneer IGA members made of Barbara and Susi, the pioneer Northerners. We do know that the line of communication between Manchester and London became more substantial, though, perhaps more like a bridge. Barbara opened the Wilton Unit as a therapeutic community in 1974, with an interdisciplinary team. She brought in a London-trained group analyst to help. This group analyst was George Pawlik, who later became the Chair of EGATIN (European Group Analytic Training Institutions Network). In 1975, Barbara published her classic research paper: ‘A Ten-Year Study of Out-Patient Analytic Group Therapy’, since republished in 2016 in Applications of Group Analysis for the 21st Century, a book edited by Jason Maratos.
Barbara also organised the second UK Regional Introductory Course in Manchester in 1977. This is the course that later became the Manchester trainings. George Renton came up from the South to run the course and Barbara, Susi and other NHS staff became students. The course was originally funded by the Northwest Regional Health Authority. Other trainers followed, namely Peter Lewis and Keith Hyde. Keith was Barbara’s successor at the Wilton Unit.
With the Wilton Unit, Keith took on the responsibility of making the bridge between London and Manchester. Keith eventually took over the training, together with Barbara, Peter Lewis, Digby Tantum, Bill Barnes, and Sheila Ernst. Bill, Sheila and Keith co-authored a basic group analytic text for introductory students in group therapy: An Introduction to Group Work: A Group Analytic Perspective, 1999, based on their work on the Introductory Course.
Beside Barbara, we can trace a large part of the origins and early development of Group Analysis North to Keith’s style of leadership, knowledge, dedication and thoughtfulness. Keith moved the Wilton Unit into a residential house in Eccles, and changed the name to the Red House. In doing this, he situated mental health resources firmly in the community. Keith brought the community aspect of group analysis even more clearly to the fore when he formed groups in the community of therapists.
By 1983, the three strands of GAN origins were already defined: NHS and private group analytic practice, group analytic training in the North, and community involvement. These three strands comprise the foundation of GAN and the source of GAN difficulties, conflicts, resilience and capacity for creative change.
Interactions and Interdependencies
In 1983, Keith, Barbara and Alan Prodgers invited a small group of professionals interested in groups to meet together. The idea was to have regular discussion meetings, perhaps leading to supervision. ( See Prodgers, 2018 / 2019).
The Manchester Introductory Course continued to train students for a year and then for two years, with an advanced course. After two years, many of us still felt half-baked as group analysts, wanted more and were willing to put energy into organising something for our own training. In the end, we made a group of five: Brian Nichol, me, Terry Horne, Sheena Pollett and Michael Goepfert. We met fortnightly for two years. In those two years, we decided on the block model from European experience with hours equal to the qualifying training in London. We ran summer workshops. We did market research in the form of questionnaires. We wrote a curriculum, which later got binned. We ‘negotiated’ with the IGA. Terry liaised with Terry Lear. Michael liaised with Leisel Hearst. It was Leisel who suggested Stephen Coghill as the best person to convene the course. We wrote a contract. We wrote a Constitution for GAN. We started to write an agreement between the IGA and GAN. We did a budget. We hired an administrator.
The Manchester Qualifying Course in Group Analysis started in June, 1989 with 14 students. In Manchester, GAN was constituted as a charity for the first time. In London, the Regional Courses Committee expanded to include the ‘Diploma Training’ as we were then called. Brian, Terry and I were in the first cohort that started in June and Michael joined us in January. I was in our first graduation in 1993.
It was indeed, an unusual birth. Firstly, the group of five that created the course had to disband, and join the course as students. Those of us who were on the course could not also be on the management committee. We could not employ and manage our own group analysts. We were required to hand the course over to the course staff who came from London. Keith, Digby Tantum, Sheila Ernst and others worked with the London staff, Stephen Coghill, Harold Behr and Cynthia Rogers to make room for the Manchester Courses in London. (Hyde, 2018).
In Manchester, Barbara Dick was the only choice for Chair. For Barbara, the Chair of the GAN Management Committee turned out to be something of a poisoned chalice. The GAN Committee had, to this point, been a part of the community aspect of GAN. This essentially local Committee had de facto become the facilitator of a national professional training. The students had trouble letting the course go. The London staff had problems asserting their authority. Keith and Barbara were caught in the middle.
Secondly, the students who had just arrived to be trained by the IGA, quite rightly, also wanted to be full members of the IGA. This was something that we had not negotiated beforehand. The question of our membership was to continue for the first ten years of the Manchester Qualifying Course in Group Analysis, until the IGA voted for the full membership of Manchester Course students and graduates in 2003.
Thirdly, London had to change in order to adopt this new baby. There were no IGA structures for a fully qualifying UK course in the regions when we started. There was also resistance to this change. There was a lot of resistance to the model of block training. Was therapy in a block equivalent to the twice-a-week therapy that was the London model?
It took ten years and a concerted effort from IGA supporters, staff and Manchester graduates to secure full membership in the IGA. There are still echoes of these initial attitudes in London, despite the success of the Manchester Courses, and the input of energy to the London organisation from the IGA members who trained in the North. Block training is now a crucial part of IGA training nationally, and some London group analysts offer block therapy as well as twice a week therapy.
The initial idea that the block model dissolve into a twice a week training model in the North has almost completely been abandoned. The block model is attractive to students and therapists as training, as therapy and as a social / community experience. The use and development of the large group on the weekend blocks is also a unique and powerful experience for those who come to Manchester to train at all levels.
In effect, the Manchester – London conversation has changed the national organisation, as much as it created and changed GAN. Because of the block model, the IGA became a national training organisation, as well as an international training organisation.
Or has it? Over Covid time, I have become more active in IGA activities in general. There are two national IGA qualifying trainings. There are also many other local Foundation and Diploma courses. I have never understood why it was so difficult for the IGA to accept the Manchester training as a full training. I now do not understand how it is that many active IGA and GASi members do not understand that there is another UK qualifying course that is different from London, but equal. Are there two Institutes of Group Analysis? One might be thought of as a colonial model of central organisation and the other may be a model of diverse national trainings? In fact, there is one model of training with at least two different applications, one a twice-a-week therapy and training in the South and the other a block training in the North. These should be, to my mind, represented equally in all levels of the IGA. Otherwise, how do we get to know each other if the differences and similarities are obscured? I think that this is an important point, especially if we are to operate national standards of diversity and equality and, in the process, learn from each other. We need to work together if we are to remake our group analytic organisations along group analytic principles. What do we need to preserve and what do we need to change?
The Analytic Conversation
Most crucially, though, I believe that we have developed something that might be thought of as the ‘analytic conversation’. A consciousness of this ‘analytic conversation’ might guide us to think more about how we observe analytic principles while also running an organisation. Students and former students often comment that this is what they miss when they are away. This is something of group analysis that we hope that they will take with them. What is this analytic conversation that is transferrable to the outside of group analysis? Our magic ingredient?
I have been privileged to have had extensive experience in the analytic trainings, as Introductory Course Convenor, seminar leader, supervisor and therapy group analyst on the Manchester Courses. I believe that I have gained an appreciation of the conversational intimacy that is needed to recognise and embrace individual and cultural differences. It enables dialogue.
This is some of what I have learned from the educational process. The elements of the analytic conversation and conscious witnessing start with an appreciation of the unconscious, even when we do not always know what is unconsciously being expressed. We know that early relationships, as well as current reality, are always present. We know the importance of self-knowledge in being able to hear what others are trying to communicate. We know the importance of being able to talk about ourselves when it is appropriate and necessary. We are curious and want to know what others are trying to communicate. We are aware of the importance of being clear and knowledgeable about ourselves in various situations. We are aware of projective processes that include the location of the disturbance, scapegoating, envy, greed and power. We are aware of the importance of hearing every voice in the room, as well as the combined voice of the group. We are aware of the importance of speaking up, perhaps especially when speaking up is difficult. We are aware that, often when we speak up, we are not speaking only for ourselves, and that others will have different thoughts and resonances. We are aware that sometimes it is more important to listen than to speak. We know that we are all interdependent and that interdependencies form historically. We know that everything that we do forms the society / environment that we inhabit.
In the UK national institute, we are developing our theory and practice to include this analytic conversation, also becoming known as intersectionality in the Power, Position and Privilege section of the IGA. I think that we should also be thinking how to develop our institutional rules and resources to reflect our common principles, in effect, decolonizing ourselves.
Writing history is also important in this process. Here, I am making a start. I am interested in seeing a London IGA history together with the impact made by Manchester. GASi also has a history as well as the national institutes and courses. Becoming conscious of our similar and different histories is an important part of decolonizing, in other words, finding ourselves with others.
Containment
When I first qualified, I traveled from Manchester to London monthly, or so, to participate on the IGA Council, as it was known then. I was also on the Panel of Readers and later on the Training Committee. I loved seeing how the IGA worked in London. It was unlike anything else that I had experienced. There were many conflicts and splits. As an outsider, I found these difficult to understand. However, also as an outsider, I could be naïve and ask questions. I believe that Manchester, as well as being a disruptive force in the IGA, has also been a containing force. The Manchester Courses have made the IGA a truly national analytic organisation. The Courses have also produced many new and enthusiastic new members. Many of the most active IGA members are Manchester graduates. The conscious witness is also a participant. In the North, the Group Analysis North organisation also works to contain the Manchester Courses. These are all latent functions of diversity, as we know from our groups. In saying this, I want to emphasise that none of this was planned. It is organisation that just happened because it could. This is knowledge that we can use to think about our present forms of organisation and how we might make them more in alignment with our group analytic principles.