1975-1989 The professional world: Group Psychotherapists, Groupanalysts, their Training and their Associations (3)

Professional plexus

is the concept which directly and indirectly articulates the work of Juan Campos during the decade of the eighties. It is a concept radically group-related, which goes beyond any mind enclosed in a cranium and any person delimited by a skin, although it contains and integrates both. Thinking in terms of a Professional plexus presupposes accepting with all its consequences the Foulkesian hypothesis that all mental processes are transpersonal in nature. It concerns what is “lo grupal”, the groupessence of groups between groups.

The Professional plexus refers to the social networks in which the therapist is inserted, first during his training and then in his professional life. His reflections on training led Juan to the concept of Professional plexus and the latter in turn led him to the analysis of training institutions and the question of institutionalization of teaching.

 1975-1989: Professional plexus. The Process of Identification and Professionalization as Groupanalyst

The professional trajectory of Juan Campos during the latter part of the seventies and the eighties has many parallel avenues and ambits, as have his contributions in the IAGP and the various grouptherapy associations in Spain. Perhaps to have a more adequate idea of this period of his professional development it is necessary to go to the end of that decade[1].

However, before going into some of these contributions, we must now mention the five major papers that show the advances and the different ways of questioning that, finally lead Juan Campos  to formulate definitely his concept of Professional Plexus which he develops from Foulkes’ concept of plexus and allows him to give some creative steps beyond the Foulkesian legacy. He presents these papers during the last year of the decade under what could be termed the process of identification and professionalization as groupanalyst. For the moment only two of these papers are available in English, so for three of them the respective commentaries will have to suffice.

“The plexus of the therapist: from group identification to professional identity” (1988) “Plexus del Terapeuta: desde la identificación grupal a la identidad profesional”), is the first of the aforementioned papers and Juan presents it at the inaugural meeting of SEGPA (Spanish Society for the development of the group, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis) of which he will be the first president. According to the author the circle representing the small group expands and grows into a round table which on the theoretical level has three legs: the network theory of neurosis, the dynamic group matrix and the processes of training and social organization of the therapists which he calls Professional Plexus. The latter concerns the ways in which the scientific professional, the psychotherapist, develops his analytic attitude, conceptualises, organises and justifies his practice and converts himself into an agent of change. The Professional Plexus of the therapist, states Juan, along his professional life can have different characteristics and should, consequently, vary in function of the needs of the members and the group as a whole. No therapist can live in isolation and less so if he is an analyst. He needs, first, a group of colleagues from whom to learn his trade, then he needs a group to which he belongs and which supports him and, finally, he requires a reliable group of colleagues in which exist the conditions of psychological and material security for being able to refer and process his experiences and contrast his ideas. These three types of group he calls respectively group of identification, group of pertaining (pertinence) and group of reference.

Juan also points out once more that the group of analysis, the group where analysis is possible or is not possible, is the one in which we find ourselves. To speak of the Professional plexus is not possible in the abstract, but only and exclusively from the personal experience of every one… and, in consequence, he suggests that the time of the inaugural meeting where he presents this paper could serve the end of sharing experiences and thoughts in this respect.

The fact, that the Professional Plexus varies in function of the group in which the professional finds himself, makes that Juan has a particular interest in the different associative group of the professionals. In this sense he gives great importance to that the IAGP has within its organisation individual members as well as organisational ones, and that the newly founded SEGPA be one of the members of the CAOA, this is to say that it counts with this space as one more group between groups where “to contrast its hypothesis in the operative field that corresponds to them”.

“The group, fifty years after Freud” (1989) “El grupo, cincuenta años después de Freud”) is Juan Campos’ contribution to number 50 of the journal Clínica y Análisis Grupal dedicated to the anniversary; it’s his second paper on the Professional Plexus. And Juan knew his Freud! He tries to retrace the professional plexus of the latter. Juan, the same than Foulkes, kept on maintaining and re-elaborating his identification with Freud’s legacy. What has marked them of the professional plexus of Freud? Why has groupanalysis taken so long to develop as a science and a method? For Juan the delay between others is related to the groups which Freud established and which established themselves around him; groups of primary identification with the leader or ideas leader. As the group grows there appear problems of sovereignty and power difficult to elaborate without group references. The “pseudo-group” functioning of this scientific and professional community comes loyally spelled out in Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. As to such an identification and analysing his own process, Juan comments: “Ten years ago I still searched for recipes for reading Foulkes, and Freud! with the hope of understanding them; having since learnt something about the art of reading, today I am glad to read them with the hope of understanding myself and to understanding each other.” He believes that although Freud has died, the orthodox psychoanalytic institution is still alive, and the supposed revolutionary potential of psychoanalysis is not noticeable in the development of modern society, rather it is absorbed as a therapy at the service of civilisation and its discontents. Three of the first followers of Freud who experimented analytically with groups had to support a confabulation of silence. The group as a space of analytic treatment and the study of the group as an object of psychoanalysis is a post-Freudian development, a product of the Second World War. In this paper, Juan Campos describes with precision the contexts and works in which the same Freud dedicates himself to formulate the conditions for Psychoanalysis to become a profound psychology applicable to all mental sciences. It would be necessary to make a double step: 1) from psychopathology to the normal psychology of the individual and 2) from psychology of the individual to collective psychology. In “Discontents…” he does not consider it off the track to carry out an analytic dissection of cultural communities, although he asks himself 1) which would be the backdrop for a group in which all the members were affected by the same disorder and 2) in the case that the diagnosis of neurosis social was correct, who would have the authority to impose that treatment on the group. Trigant Burrow —whom Freud knew personally and maintained years of correspondence with him— in those days had already formulated his theory of the neurosis of man as species. Burrow was one of the psychoanalysts radically silenced.

In 1989 Juan Campos restates what he already stated in 1963: “Psychoanalysis in the dual situation is an inadequate instrument for the study of group phenomena. The theories which about group psychology had been formulated before the emergence of groupanalysis were pure applied psychoanalysis, theoretical speculations without an experiencial base. Analytic group psychotherapy needs a theory of personality as well as one about the psychological and dynamic functioning of groups and the interrelation between both. Up to now nobody has been able to offer an integrated and satisfactory theory of man as individual and member of a group…” However, in 1989 Juan makes the following self-critique: “What I think I was crying out for is ‘enough of applied analysis!’, let us start with the clinic; what is appropriate is not to analyse just the individual but the group, in the group and with the group, literally in this case what I asked for is a little more of “clínica y análisis grupal”, of group clinic and analysis!” Adding: “The furor curandis and the enthusiasm for training which I show is understandable in a young doctor recently graduated in psychoanalysis, but where had my groupanalytic training gone to through which I went to avoid secondary effects? What impresses me is the lack of consequence I show: in the hour of producing theory, behind this nobody there is no group nor a group of groups, there hides the genius of the singular individual, there we are once again with the phallic tree that prevents us from seeing the luxuriant and beautiful woods; it seems that I am still longing ‘for that somebody who one day dares to embark on the pathology of cultural communities’ and who brings us from the deepest and most profound unconscious the theory that reveals the meaning, in other words the Bible! What do I ask for’? For whom do I sigh? A new Freud, a Melanie Klein, a Bion, a Foulkes, a Meltzer, a Lacan?

 

“The identity of the Freudian groupanalyst to-day” (1989) “La identidad del grupoanalista freudiano, hoy”), curiously enough, Juan presents it at the foundational congress of yet another group society, the APAG (Association of Analytic Group Psychotherapy) of Bilbao. This is a paper full of history since Juan at the end of the seventies and during the first half of the eighties travels regularly to the Basque Country, contributing to the training of group psychotherapists there. He introduces the paper with the following monologue of questions and answers:

Freud is dead in England

Analytic Group Psychotherapies in the fields of Northfield started to green

BUT…

Were they analytic the group therapies initiated there by Bion and Foulkes?

I DON’T KNOW!

Was it analytically that Freud in life established and conducted the groups to whom confide afterwards HIS Psychoanalysis?

I DON’T KNOW

What I do know is that here, in the Basque Country, at the beginning of the sixties, Psychoanalysis had a second chance to do it in a group, analytically…

BUT…

Did we make use of it?

I NEITHER KNOW!

WHAT I DO KNOW, I insist, is that here it was intended to do it analytically by way of the group. If it was achieved or not,

WE WILL HAVE TO SEE!

 

The emphasis of these reflections is on “analytical” and it is from this adjective that Juan approaches once again the subject of the identity of the groupanalyst.  When he first listened to the paper of Foulkes on “The qualification as psychoanalyst, an advantage or a hindrance for the future Group Analyst?”, it was for him a mutative interpretation. “It impacted —as he said— right in the Santa Barbara of my professional ego”. The argument of the paper is that one acquires early imprinting as a psychoanalyst, which makes that one develops attitudes, as defences against analytic group work. Who wants to follow a double training, says Foulkes, should begin with a group analysis, although it does not have to be too long. Juan questions his professional identity: “What then? Am I a psychoanalyst who does group psychotherapies? Am I a groupanalyst who does groupanalysis even when the patients are lying on the couch? Or, neither one nor the other, or all to the contrary? I started to understand why somebody would say that groupanalysis is a training for uncertainty!” It will take him more than a decade to position himself and heal his narcissistic wound.

To question his own identity as a groupanalyst takes Juan to critically evaluate his efforts as a trainer. During previous decades he had already tried to introduce a groupanalytic point of view in the training of health professionals and the education of future doctors, looking for situations in which education, clinical study and investigation would complement each other simultaneously… but with rather little success.

However, upon arriving in Bilbao and discovering that there the training ha started from the group side, Juan thought that these were unique conditions for trying out Foulkes’ hypotheses. This is the reason for the questions at the beginning of the paper. In Bilbao were given all the circumstances for questioning in depth his own way of teaching. Taking into account that his assignment in principle was for one year, he decided that for the educational health of this group it was important to avoid in so far as possible the massive identification of the group with the “maestro”, or the doctrine of which he is carrier. Therefore, Juan planned the supervision as a “shared co-vision”, group-gestated, in a way that once finished the contract, the groups of co-vision could continue their task by themselves as peers and colleagues. The chapter in Psicología Dinámica Grupal, “Psychoanalysis, psychoanalysts and group psychotherapists” carries the date of May 7, 1979; this is to say the end of the first course of supervision. Says Juan: “I am sure that many of these ideas were gestated in my journeys to and from Bilbao and thanks to the influence of this course. To supervise in Bilbao for me was one of the most risky and fortunate decisions taken during my professional life. It forced me to revise my own schemes and my own individual and group identity, and to do it groupanalytically, what has been cause of difficulties and pains you cannot imagine.”

 

 

In successive years Juan creates together with another colleague from Bilbao a group community of total teaching-learning, which thanks to the analysis as a group permitted the work as a group, this is to say the harmonious cooperative action of which Bion spoke. “I myself learnt a lot from this course, between other things to read, to write and to think… and this thanks to that in successive courses we proposed first, operation reading; second, from the reader to the writer; and third, from the author to authorship.  It always has been my conviction that to give titles is question of the University, to give professional guaranties is a question of professional colleges and for our continuous education and progress and theoretical and practical development of the sciences we cultivate we have enough on the national level with scholarly associations, learned societies like this one (APAG) or like the one (SEGPA) with similar objectives we founded in Madrid in June last year.”

Since 1975 Juan is elaborating the problem of the double group and individual identity of the analytic group psychotherapist. He thinks that to the Bilbao experiments correspond a decisive role in building a bridge between University, public care and private practice, between orthodox and not so orthodox Psychoanalysis, between Psychoanalysis of the individual, analytic psychotherapies of the group and analytic therapies of the community.

 

“A Prototype of Group Model for Psychoanalysis: From the <<Group of two>> to the <<Group of 2+n persons” [2] This paper, the fourth in the series about the Professional Plexus, was presented in English to the Milan Congress of April 1989, organized by the Italian Association of Group Psychotherapy under the theme of “Present-day Psychoanalytic Models of the Group”. The Italian colleagues from Milan as well as from Rome and Palermo have a vast knowledge of the work of Foulkes, and naturally of Freud, and there has been mutual and continuous collaboration with Juan Campos ever since the sixties. They all share common interests in the groupanalytic development on the local, national, European and international level. This is to say, although this is a paper with a very wide perspective of the concept of Professional Plexus and the arguments go deep into the development of the ideas in relation to the history of psychoanalysis and of groupanalysis and the propositions to the groups responsible for the training of group psychotherapists and groupanalysts, Juan on this occasion also spoke to a public used to the routes of his particular way of thinking; and the colleagues following the development of the concept of Professional Plexus in this paper will also have to find their way through the propositions Juan makes in relation to the concept and the training of professionals. The theme of the Congress forces him to present arguments which give the Professional Plexus the category of a radically groupanalytic group model. Emphasis is made on questions related to a before and an after of taking on board or not taking on board a proposition.

Summarising briefly we can say the following: If we compare the classical model of training group in Psychoanalysis and the training network in action in Group Analysis we will see that both rest upon still another fundamental tripod: Personal analytic experience of the method which later is to be applied to others, supervision by more experienced colleagues, and transmission of theory and technique. What is radically different is the model of professional development with which one operates. The first is based on “the model of two” described by Freud in Mass Psychology, totally in consonance with the structure of the patriarchal family or the primitive horde prevalent in a cultural community the neurosis of which expresses itself in competitive, possessive and egocentric attitudes and in an order which ascends on a hierarchic scale. The second, on the other hand, is a model in principle democratic and evolving based on cooperative action, where the needs, the dependencies of the analyst are satisfied guided by that principle of progressive “decrescendo” of Foulkes.

The latter relates to the innovative proposition of this paper. Juan Campos proposes that there are three types of groups a therapist in training needs:

1. The group of identification, the one in which the student learns and identifies himself with the profession and which should be a temporal institution, not permanent, for the students as well as for the teachers — this is an innovative proposition and would be revolutionary if it arrived to be implemented.
2. The group of pertinencia (to which one pertains, belongs) in turn is the one which provides the necessary cooperation between colleagues in the relationships with society in the widest sense.
3. The group of reference, on the other hand, is the one which permits the analyst to go on progressing in his own science, processing his experience; it is the one which radically applies to itself the same principles it preaches.

“From the dream of Irma to the dream of Mira. Professional dreams?”[3] (1989) Desde el sueño de Irma al sueño de Mira. ¿Professional dreams?), is the fifth key paper related to the concept of Professional Plexus; in this case it is a little book written in bilingual Castilian and Catalan; and there is an English translation at our disposal. It is written in homage to Freud on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, and to Emili Mira y López a Catalan psychiatrist who in 1926 gave a series of conferences at the Academy of Medical Sciences introducing Freud’s psychoanalysis to the doctors. He illustrated his explanations with the famous dream of Irma as well as one of his own dreams. Juan adds a dream of a Catalan named Bernat Metge who in the middle of the XIV century wrote a little booklet in Catalan titled “Lo Somni” (On dream) in which, naturally, he includes dreams to which he offers his interpretations. Juan Campos, on one hand, communicates his interest for history, the history of psychoanalysis and of groupanalysis and, on the other hand, how “professional” dreams, this royal road to the unconscious, also make a bridge which leads from psychoanalysis to groupanalysis. To show how these red threads extend throughout time, Juan presents a table where appears side by side the Irma dream of Freud as in The Interpretation of Dreams with the one Mira presents of this same dream in his conference on Psychoanalysis. With this table, Juan emphasises points which pass unnoticed in the original version of Freud and turn out to be key elements for a re-interpretation of meanings Freud repressed. From a groupanalytic point of view he discovers a professional plexus between teacher and pupil, master and disciple, which not only shows the unconscious identifications but also the successive repressions on the part of the dreamers or the historians of dreams. Foulkes “knew” his Freud; Juan “knew” his Freud and his Foulkes… but without a doubt, if we want to know certain things about ourselves we need a group we can trust and where there is the necessary psychological security to be able to say what passes through our mind. Here is a method.