“Caledonia Stern and Wild” The beginnings of group analysis in Scotland
1.
This essay will offer an honest and (mostly) objective account of the beginnings and early development of group analysis in Scotland. It will mostly concern itself with activities related to the IGA London, since this was the main focus of the work that was done and attempted. But I shall also try to cover the role and presence of GAS (London) – I call it this because most of this happened before the evolution of GASi, and also before the beginnings of the Irish GAS, IGAS, with which I also had a relationship. I begin with a few preliminary observations:
[1] The sequence of events had its ups and downs and I shall not try to gloss over this, because these eventualities were a part of everyone’s learning process….
[2] A part of this effort includes some attention to the principle, which I have carefully checked out with group analysts in England and Ireland, which avers that group analysts, despite their training, are not visibly better at being in groups and organisations, and at running these, than other people in comparable groupings, regions, states, organisations and everything else.
[3] The sociologist Norbert Elias maintains that splitting, or the threat of it, is to be found in virtually all groupings; that if a split does not occur spontaneously those who participate in it, or look in from outside, will soon make one or more. These divisions are sometimes organic or healthy enough; sometimes the split elements recoalesce, sometimes not. Such processes are found in states, regions, places, movements, religions and organisations. I originally thought that in Scotland, for its size, there was more than a fair share of splits and divisions but now I believe that given various circumstances they are not surprising, and may be life-giving. This essay will try to understand those which occurred within the parameters of the group-analytic movement.
I shall also try to put the Scottish events and developments into the context of their relations with other sectors of the worlds of the IGA and GAS. Isolation and entropy have often been a telling dimension of Scottish life and developments, while at the same time there has often been more dedication to the task of creating working relations with other entities than is at first apparent.
This account may also at times seem more autobiographical than seems proportionate, and I have tried to keep self-reference within bounds. However, the reality was, at more than a few moments, that I seemed to be ploughing a lonely furrow. The reasons for this will become apparent.
2.
The accounts I have just read, or which I knew about directly, of the beginnings of group analysis in other countries and regions often suggest that a beginning was made with explicit support and approval of the relevant sector within IGA London, and in response to ample requests and even proposals from a cohort of members of IGA and GAS, in the place where a new start was hoped for. On the other hand, some of the accounts refer to initiatives unbeknownst to the IGA, or pursued in the face of nonchalance or even indifference from the headquarters in Daleham Gardens. But there is a considerable difference between local members who proposed to start only an Introductory course (as it was then called), and fully worked-out plans to launch a complete program leading to the emergence of new Members of the Institute. There appear to have been around six or eight free-standing Introductory courses by the late 1980’s. A usual development was that some of these developed organically into what were at first called Diploma courses and not Qualifying courses, because Daleham Gardens were unconvinced that anybody could possibly devise a course to equal the quality of the Qualifying Course in London. This feature, of resistance of the centre to developments on the periphery, is of course virtually a standard reaction in organisations, and as in other cases the IGA proved itself no more enlightened, or encouraging to its own members, than many another organisation.
3.
I arrived in Glasgow, having just obtained my Membership of the IGA, with every intention of starting to run analytic psychotherapy groups, in 1980. In Manchester they already had “boots on the ground” and the programs, starting with the Introductory course, were under way. Seemingly there was a large and confident start in Manchester, linked closely with the NHS authorities in North-West England, and drawing on support from Daleham Gardens, although it appeared that nobody in the Manchester area had set up a group-analytic therapy group for clients. From the outset the enterprise in Manchester was under the flag of another organisation, Group Analysis North (GAN), which was separate from the IGA in London and indeed existed as a training body before the link was established with IGA courses, though they maintained (mostly) friendly relations. In Glasgow circumstances were very different. A start was made with group-analytic therapy groups, and two once-weekly groups were established (outside of the NHS) within a year and a half: one of which was still ongoing some 38 years later, when the pandemic arrived on the scene. As far as opening a training program was concerned, it was seen that the presence in Glasgow was too small and vulnerable to attempt an independent training organisation, therefore official links with IGA London were set up from the start.
It also seemed desirable that the new presence in Glasgow should try to establish links with other entities which were present and operating in Scotland, chief of which was the Scottish Institute of Human Relations (SIHR), which had a strong presence in Edinburgh, operating its own independent training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy (which had a start date about every three years with small numbers) and supporting a membership who provided individual analytic psychotherapy and who were prominent in the psychiatric sector of NHS Scotland. But they had only two or three members in Glasgow or the West, and my choice of Glasgow as a place to start was partly influenced by a wish to avoid opening in any close proximity to them, and looking as if I had an intention to rival them. Al l the same, the corporate welcome we got from the SIHR was notably underwhelming. I was advised of the desirability of taking out membership of the SIHR and I applied, then waited two years for a response (and acceptance) which, I afterward learned, was made at all mainly because their membership secretary was booted by one of the members from “The West”, who then and at all times gave me a lot of support and even a half-apology for “the people in Edinburgh”. It was all like something out of Norbert Elias. Welcome to the normality of a situation where unofficial interventions are often more effective than official ones. I did actually, over several years, get a good deal of support and understanding from the “Western” members of the SIHR, and our enterprise of putting on training programs was able to gain visible public support and even (for some years) collaboration from the SIHR.
4.
In the event it did not take too long before an IGA-approved Introductory course was able to open its doors – in the autumn of 1984 – and by then enough colleagues from headquarters in Daleham Gardens – notably Vivienne Cohen, who decared to me a historical connexion with Scotland – were supportive and even encouraging for this to be a fairly straightforward matter within the IGA. We had been able to recruit enough applicants to start with two Small Groups, and Jeff Roberts agreed to make the journey from London to conduct one of them (with me conducting the other), with all together for other events, mainly theory, and Work Discussion sessions, and we usually started meetings of the “large group” by about the fifth of ten block weekend meetings. We were able to draw on help from other group analysts from “the South”, who typically delivered all three theory sessions over one weekend meeting.
The whole program thus consisted of ten block weekend meetings within the academic year, at intervals of not less than three weeks, and avoidance of public holiday weekends. It was found that “the market” could bear this level of commitment and travel, and this arrangement continued for about ten years, with no intake having to be cancelled for lack of numbers. After that, as described below, and with the explicit approval of Council of the IGA, we started to add years: Advanced Year 1 was added, then one year of program was added in every calendar year until we had the full complement required for the Qualifying Course.
5.
During the ten years of the free-standing Introductory course we always had at least two small groups, and on about three occasions we had three groups. This was a relatively simple matter to arrange since it was a new start for everyone when the program began in September each year. It made for a more diverse student body, which was helpful because with such a relatively small catchment population it was challenging to ensure that nobody needed to be in a small group with anyone else that they knew, while having the colleague from London, whom nobody knew, made it possible for the few people who knew me, or had regular work contacts with me outside of the course, to be given a place in his group. We never had to turn anyone away because they knew too many people on the program. Once we had to redirect an applicant from Iceland because our course was full up, though the applicant was content to go to Turvey instead. But we did take on applicants from many places in Scotland and even a few from further afield – Norway, France, as well as the North of England – which was an enriching diversification. Apart from these details the program proceeded during all these years with no surprising incident – we never even got snowed off – except for a minor stir created by Dr Sandra Grant, a prominent figure in the NHS and the SIHR, and one of the few Consultant Psychotherapists in Glasgow. At the time our large group was the last event of the day on the Friday evening, and Sandra was conducting it for the year. On one occasion she graced us with her presence at the large group in evening dress, because she had to go straight on to another function.
These ten years were also a busy time for Group Analysis. In Manchester, GAN had started to operate the IGA’s Introductory course a few years before us in Glasgow, and they appear to have always had a large annual intake – often 30 to 40. After some experimenting they had settled to a program leading to the qualifying course by the early 1990’s – again, a few years before Glasgow. The course which, as far as I can see, was the first one to be established outside of London was originally called the East Midlands course in group work, and operated continuously in different venues until settling at Turvey, where the premises were able to offer overnight accommodation on site, and they, later on, gained approval to operate a qualifying course there, on the Block Weekend model (of which more anon).
6.
In Dublin a similar story was unfolding. While visiting Dublin I happened to be party to some unplanned discussions with colleagues from the Department of Psychotherapy of University College, at which the possibility of starting up the program from the IGA London was mooted. Unknown to me these ideas were carried forward at the IGA, with the result that an Introductory course was planned, hosted by the same Department, and convened at their teaching hospital, St Vincent’s in Dublin. This began in 1987 and had the good fortune of opening its doors to 44 new applicants, in four Small Groups – from which abundance, in many ways, the program has never looked back. They continued to Advanced Year 1 in the autumn or 1989, for which I had been recruited; I took charge of a fifth group and remained on the staff for ten years. As far as I know that course is still going strong and has made a significant contribution to psychotherapy in Ireland by putting more than forty group analysts into the system.
Back in Glasgow we had still not gone as far as that. However, I obtained my Training Group Analyst ticket from IGA London in 1992, having been conducting a twice-weekly group in Glasgow for two or three years before that. Soon after that we were able to open Advanced Year 1, as described above. The steady progression to having the full complement of years of the course, and five Small Groups, in the course of four years, was intense and challenging, and a bit fraught at times but also very rewarding for the staff and, I believe, for those trainees who took part – even if they did not continue to the conclusion. The opening of the third and final year of the Qualifying Course led into what may be called the Steady Years, probably about twelve years, before the number of applicants suddenly dropped, and with it came the impending collapse of the course.
7.
It appears that the structuring of the overall training into block weekends began in some of the Continental centres – Denmark and Norway spring to mind, but I am sure there were others – but Glasgow may have been the first place in Britain where this was practised from the first, in our Introductory course. In Dublin it was in place from the start, and although they started later than Glasgow they soon forged ahead by going straight on to the higher years, whereas in Glasgow that took more than a few years. Manchester always had a relatively large Introductory – or General Course in Group Work, as it was at first called, including in Glasgow – which did not lend itself to being integrated with the smaller numbers in the higher years, and in any case the Manchester introductory, for many years, followed the London pattern of having weekly meetings on an afternoon and evening, which would never have been feasible in Glasgow, in view of the distances people were travelling to get there, which entailed the necessity, for some, of overnighting during the program. When these programs developed the full complement of “years” of the course the same pattern soon became apparent, in several venues, called the “1 + 2 + 3”: one year of Introductory, two years of Advanced, then three years of Qualifying Course.
Except that it wasn’t called “the Qualifying Course” from the outset. The IGA was adamant that completion of this course in Manchester could not entitle the successful candidate to Membership of the IGA. They later partly relented and said they could be given a Diploma, and a newly-created Associate membership. Only when, after much wrangling, Council could be convinced that the right question to ask was not, “Does this upstart course assure the same standard as our Qualifying Course in London?” but “Do this course, the London course, and any other course which may be developed, reach an agreed standard of excellence?” did they relent and allow that the Manchester course reached this sta,dard and could properly be termed a Qualifying Course, thus making its graduates eligible for Membership. That took only a few years. To the north, in Glasgow, thanks in large measure to the hard work of our colleagues in Manchester, we were spared most of this process and progressed smoothly to recognition of our course as a Qualifying Course. Across in Dublin the process was different again. It was decided early on that it came under the jurisdiction of the Overseas Courses Committee: it could grant Diplomas, but no resident of the UK could obtain one, nor could these Diplomates become Members of IGA London. From the outset in Dublin there were always a few trainees who lived in Northern Ireland, but there was no political will (and in Daleham Gardens, possibly no awareness) to draw attention to this anomaly, and the colleagues from Northern Ireland went through and graduated with the rest. In time, as had always been intended, the “ownership” of the course was transferred to the new Institute of Group Analysis, Registered in the Irish Republic, which conferred its membership on the graduates.
8.
Life during the Steady Years in Glasgow was not always dull. One feature which it closely shared with Dublin (and I believe in Manchester this was similar) was the way in which the Large Group acquired a life of its own. In all three centres it usually assembled between 45 and 50 people, across all five years of the program and including the five small group conductors, with no overall conductor. I was privileged to have the enriching experience of participating in both Glasgow and Dublin, sharing in the exchanges which were by turn profound, empathic, acrimonious, witty and hilarious, secure in the conviction that London did not have anything to compare; although, for some in the introductory year, it did take some getting used to, it was very probably one of the main instruments of the overall experiential and therapeutic learning process. It needs to be placed alongside the participation in the small groups. We followed the policy that new arrivals were placed in a small group and could expect to remain in that group throughout their years on the course. It was soon apparent that this experience, for the new arrivals, greatly improved their motivation to “come back next year”, and we made this easier by allowing that anyone who wished could go straight on without having to make a new application to enter the Advanced course. But they did have to go to London to be interviewed to start the qualifying course, alongside candidates for the other qualifying courses, because our staff were clear that the candidates should not be open at any later point to the gibe that they had sneaked into the QC by the back door thanks to indulgent staff in Glasgow. But if accepted they stayed in the same small group. We had false starts and dropouts, of course, and occasionally a trainee had to be discreetly advised not to continue, but there was nothing to suggest that we had more than in the twice-weekly groups which were the substratum of the London QC, and I could add from my own experience of being in Robin Skynner’s twice-weekly group that even the mighty Skynner, who selected all the members of his groups, had the occasional false start – that is, someone who was advised by Robin to leave, or left of their own accord, after only a couple of weeks. He had told the group that this was part of their learning experience, whether they were trainees on the QC, or “normal” members of the public.
Possibly more relevant to my present concerns, is the ongoing incidence on the Glasgow program (mainly with staff: the trainees were only peripherally involved) of tensions and exchanges which nowadays might be called culture wars. These matters never arose while we were just a simple free-standing Introductory, and retrospect makes it apparent that they had started in London at the IGA. Thus, some staff (almost certainly who came from London for the weekends) were dissatisfied with the practice of operating fully-integrated small groups. They wanted the small group or groups for the Introductory to be kept separate from the rest, and its members only placed among these if they came back for Advanced Year 1. The reason given for this was so that the quality of work in their own group would not be sullied by having beginners, not selected by them, in it. There were several arguments against this. For instance: that the current practice held the course together better; that it enabled the newcomer to get a proper experience of joining a rolling group which made it more likely that they would wish to carry on on the program; that the Convenor had enough work to do, to separate new arrivals and place them carefully in different groups in order to uphold the “stranger” principle, without having to worry about this twice for everyone who joined; that the present system meant that it was possible to have a new intake which did not have enough joiners in it to be able to make up a viable number for an Introductory small group, because they all got spread round; and finally, the counter-argument, already outlined above, from the present writer’s own experience of the London courses. This carried the day at the time, but did not generate amnesia on the part of its advocates, and came back again from time to time.
More significant, perhaps, was the level of dissent among staff regarding the theory package presented on the course (with the approval of the IGA’s Curriculum Committee). This may have been brought from the London courses, and there was also a strong hint that it infiltrated from the SIHR in Edinburgh, some of whose members were good at remote control. Whatever be the reality of that, it implied attitudes which I could recollect from my own time as a trainee in London. The most prominent of these was a kind of embarrassment on the part of some staff about the Foulkesian theory: that it was lightweight, or not voluminous enough (the same thing, perhaps?) and regarded as inferior to psychoanalytic theory – how, was never clearly spelled out, but it had plenty to do with orthodoxy and not much to do with clinical effectiveness in the group setting. Or it could just have been that it was not academic, or even difficult, enough. In Glasgow this tendency, the implication that “rigorous” theory was more important than the quality of life in the small groups, surfaced as a conviction that the syllabus for the QC was just not Kleinian enough, though this was never shaped into a theory about Kleinian group therapy: which to others, in the event, would have been a contradiction in terms. This could have degenerated into a kind of individual therapy (Kleinian) in the group setting, rather than proper Foulkesian group analysis. But we managed to avoid that, it would seem.
9.
I am aware that this collection is at the behest of GASi rather than the IGA, and thought at first that there might be nothing to report that specifically had to do with origins and developments in and around GAS, as it was at an earlier stage. But further reflection threw up some details, which it may be worth reporting here as a conclusion to this paper.
When I started up in Glasgow in 1980 there were about three members of GAS in Scotland, including myself. Later, when there were trainees on the IGA courses, who might be finding it difficult enough to pay for their places, and spend what could be a considerable amount making arrangements to it and, later, set up and run the groups they had to conduct, the question of GAS membership arose, but no-one seemed inclined to pay a full annual subscription to GAS when nothing was happening in Scotland, they could have free admission to some events in London, but midweek evening meetings in London were impossible, and people would have to travel to London and lodge there at their own expense. Nevertheless, as years went on there arose a significant number of people who had completed the Advanced course in Glasgow, and had decided not to continue with the course but did not wish to sever their links with the group analysis movement. They were looking for something. Some of these people were in positions of responsibility in the NHS, others had decided that they were too near the end of their working lives to wish to spend three years or more on the QC. Others were hoping that they might be able to resume their training on the IGA’s courses, in Glasgow or elsewhere, at a later date. With changes of government in the UK, the context of the psychotherapy milieu in Scotland was contracting rather than developing by this time, and to have completed three years of proper psychotherapy in their group (and some of them had taken the Certificate which was offered to them, for only a little work additional to the Advanced Course), with the theory and supervision that went with this, placed them well into the upper half of those who had done any serious training in psychotherapy.
But a solution of a kind was found. GAS in London were persuaded to create a Corporate Member in Scotland, and those who were prepared to pay a modest subscription could become members of this corporate member, or Associate members of GAS. The idea, which was realised, was to operate informal evening meetings, about three or four times a year. Some of the veteran full members of GAS were happy to come in and give a talk, on their work or some such topic, then after a refreshment pause all took part in an experiential group. This seemed to hit a spot, we regularly had attendances of around a dozen, and the event continued for several years but then quietly subsided; it is not known whether GAS even noticed.
10.
Under GAS auspices we also did put on a celebrity lecture – once. Glasgow City Council was known to provide support for local charities by letting them have free use of one of their rather splendid halls in the City Chambers, in the centre of the city, for suitable public events. They willingly agreed to provide for a lecture-and-workshop event, and Estela Welldon was recruited to come and deliver the lecture. Estela was well known as a best-selling feminist writer; it was less known that she was also a Group Analyst. Her lecture was therefore a big draw for the first of these reasons, and she spoke to a hall of more than two hundred on a Friday evening. But the organisers of the event – all volunteers from our little GAS circle and from the IGA course – were also able to put on a half-day workshop the following morning, using small group work in the plentiful breakout rooms of the City Chambers, and Estela also took an active part in this – indeed, it has to be said, was more comprehensible in her rich hispanic accent in the more intimate settings, than she had been the previous evening.
There remains one last GAS incident worthy of note. One fine day, at a meeting of the IGA course, word came through that the annual Dennis Brown Essay Prize, a GAS feature, had just been won by a man in Advanced Year 2 of our course. Dear Reader and fellow-GAS member, you should have seen the rejoicing on so many faces, but also the teeth-gnashing consternation on the faces of just a few staff: especially as in this case there was no possibility of bias on the part of the assessment panel for the prize, since it was all done by blind marking! Someone not even on the QC, and in this little provincial course!