Admissions policy.

If we cast our minds back 20 years, you will recall that homosexuality was a bar to psychoanalytic training. It is widely known that despite this policy, gay and lesbian analysts were trained through concealing their sexual orientation. Now the gates are wide open. In group analysis we opened the gates somewhat earlier.

Nowadays we are all more sensitive to issues of ethnicity. Dalal, a Parsee, born in India, has expanded our thinking with his recent book "Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialisation: New Perspectives from Group Analysis, Psychoanalysis and Sociology" (Brunner-Routledge, 2002). Dalal has highlighted the hidden dimension of power in psychotherapy, thus following on Trigant Burrow's pioneering lonely path. When Burrow brought these issues of power to the psychoanalytic community, they were refuted; this path eventually led to his exclusion from the American Psychoanalytic Association, despite his having been a founder member and former president. He was a man ahead of his times who endured the fate that Bion predicted for those who "menace the existing web of thought", the "defensive termination of the unknown Messianic idea, or person, or movement". (1992)

Critical theory.

The accepted order in group analysis has been a theoretical framework broadly outlined by SH Foulkes in the 20 years after 1945. This framework is sufficiently robust and flexible to accommodate and respond to internal criticism. I refer here to Morris Nitsun and Farhad Dalal. Nitsun (1996) indites for an over-optimistic and idealising belief in the power of the group to overcome destructive anti-group forces. His criticism, which I do not agree with, has encouraged debate and has indeed brought group-analytic theory into prominence, particularly in North America, which hitherto had paid relatively little attention to group analysis, preferring the apparently more radical approach of object-relations theory and Bion.

In Dalal's first book, subtitled "Towards a Post-Foulkesian, Group-Analytic Theory" (Jessica Kingsley Publications 1998), he asserts that there is a disjunction between Foulkes, the "orthodox" psychoanalyst, still wedded to individualistic psychoanalytic theory and "radical Foulkes", whose ideas were inspired by the sociological thoughts of his close friend Norbert Elias. For Elias, the personal is profoundly social: Dalal writes that the social unconscious "is a representation of the institutionalisation of social power relations in the structure of the psyche itself" (page 209, Taking the Group Seriously: Towards a Post-Foulkesian Group-Analytic Theory. Jessica Kingsley Publications, 1998). Earl Hopper, a powerful theorist, who essays to integrate sociology, psychoanalysis and group analysis explores the concept of the Social Unconscious from a somewhat different perspective. (2003)

I present these contributions to convey that group analysis is a progressive body of knowledge with boundaries oven to developments in the neighbouring fields: I could also speak of Neuroscience, particularly the mirror neurone, or the economic theory, where Adam Smith spoke about society as a mirror for the individual and genetics and evolutionary psychology.

How is this developing field expressed in our teaching? The expansion of knowledge and the wide application of group-analytic theory and practice has led to introduction of Modules.

All students share a common First Year of Theory and subsequently they make choices amongst Modules on offer:
Modules are particular areas of theory and practice, such as Gender & Sexuality,
Social Unconscious and Culture
Victims and Perpetrators
Organisation
Health Services.

This major step in our Curriculum is a response to the differing needs of our students. The "one size fits all" model is no longer valid. Students have a wide range of knowledge and experience when they enter training. Some are novices to the field of psychotherapy, others have years of experience. They have different needs and different career structures. The modular development imposes new tasks for teachers and complex organisational demands, another necessary challenge to the health of the Institute of Group Analysis.

IGA London is the UR Institute. It is the model from which other European Institutes develop on and for which they create their own identities. IGA Athens, Denmark, Norway, have their own characteristics. Institutions at the periphery are often emboldened, are able to be innovational. They are less held down by tradition and bureaucracy. Overall, the picture as I see it in London is a healthy one and we are all linked together in the European Group-Analytic Training Institutes Network. We can look forward to hearing from these Institutes and from others which I have not so far mentioned on this notable occasion.

References

Harrison T. (2000). Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and the Northfield Experiment. Advancing on a different Front. London, Jessica Kingsley Publications.

Dalal, F (1998). Taking the Group Seriously. Towards a Post-Foulkesian Group Analysis. Jessica Kingsley Publications.

Bion, W.R. Cogitations, page 319. Karnac, London1992.

Hopper, E. The Social Unconscious. Jessica Kingsley 2003.