Morris
Morris Nitsun 11/10/1944 – 10/11/2022
In recent years Morris occasionally expressed frustration that his concept of the anti- group, which was undoubtedly the launchpad for his rise to prominence in the group analytic world, had become something of a burden. While it had afforded him a high degree of fame in the world of group analysis, along with exciting invitations to various countries to offer workshops and supervisions, he had become a little bored with the repetition of its explication and felt, with some reason, that his later works were, despite being broader ranging and much more sophisticated, relatively neglected.
The Anti-Group begins with a fascinating prologue about the purchase of Foulkes’ curtains that not only demonstrated Morris’s skill as a writer, a profession he flirted with to the extent of winning a prize for a short story in early adulthood, but his capacity for imagining himself into the mind of another and emerging with a treasure trove of speculative contemplations. In this case he used the famous curtains purchased by Foulkes, with their depictions of violent death and destruction to meditate upon the strange diminution of the importance of aggression in Foulkesian theory and to hypothesise from Foulkes’ personal history why this may have occurred.
The combination of imagination, creativity and rigorous academic research that went into developing this concept of the anti-group from a student dissertation into a seminal work of group analysis was to become the hallmark of Morris’s explorations, which would expand into the realms of sexuality and art alongside concerns about the social and environmental context in which the great drama of human relationships play out.
His painting too continued to develop and evolve throughout his life, taking, in more recent years, an abrupt turn towards publicly exploring the social psyche through the images he created, courageously putting himself on the line in the exploratory conversations that he facilitated around them. More recently he had extended his range into using dance as a means of both extending and deepening the meaning that can be found in non-verbal communication. In a fitting coda, Morris’s last book, yet to be launched, pulled together more closely the psychotherapeutic and artistic strands of his career, openly expressing his own feelings and experiences, as he increasingly did in his later clinical work, to try and illuminate the issues and problems he was addressing.
Amidst all this creative and academic endeavour Morris proved to be a forceful exponent of the clinical practice of group analysis. Anybody who has attempted the challenge of setting up and sustaining a group analytic culture in any organisation will acknowledge that it demands not only the courage and energy to fight for resources, but an unusual dedication, devotion, and belief in the project. Morris did it twice, once at Goodmayes hospital and then in Camden which continues to this day to be a rich resource for IGA trainees. His passion for this work made it difficult for him to retire and he maintained a role in the NHS for as long as humanly possible, receiving for his efforts a much-cherished award from the Royal College of Psychiatry.
Whilst writing his books, globe- trotting with his international workshops developing his art, Morris also joined with close colleagues to take on the challenge of setting up the Fitzrovia Group Analytic Practice, formed from a shared determination that, following the demise of the original group analytic practice, there would remain a practice in London whose primary motive was the delivery of group analysis.
All of this was achieved without, somehow, neglecting his social life. It seemed a rare evening when he wasn’t having dinner with someone or going to the cinema, the theatre, or entertaining friends with his husband Tony at one of their homes in London & Brighton. He was also pleasantly reliable in reading recommendations of books or poetry which he loved to discuss in depth.
It would be doing Morris a disservice to write about him in solely hagiographic terms (he would certainly smile at this sentence and say – ‘oh I don’t know, perhaps you could…’), as he did after all build his group analytic reputation on his iconoclasm. And in this spirit, it is maybe helpful to acknowledge that working closely alongside Morris for many years it became apparent that much of his drive emerged from a resolve to never feel marginalised or excluded. The reasons for this can be left open for future speculation but would almost certainly include; being Jewish, growing up in an apartheid country and, later, practicing in a field that continued to pathologize his sexuality well into his career. Whatever the causes, one consequence was that Morris struggled to adapt to situations where he was not in a leadership role. This could prove difficult in a democratic partnership, though it would be true to say that there was never anybody more appreciative of someone else’s capacity to negotiate an IKEA flat pack.
One area in which he might also be said to have suffered a rare failure of symbolic thinking, was that his determination to shed light on things extended into an apparently compulsive urge to purchase lamps. Many of these purchases were made with the conviction that the current lighting was broken. Let’s just say that though I don’t know how many group analysts it takes to change a lightbulb, I do know that Morris Nitsun wasn’t one of them. We are all though, dimmed by his loss.
Peter Wilson, Fitzrovia Practice