1980-1998 From Groupanalysis to Group of Analysis (Grup d’Anàlisi) 1

1988 Grup d’Anàlisi Barcelona

 

Between the years of investigation of his groupanalytic heritage and the search for and creation of group contexts of analysis, Juan Campos promoted and fostered the development of a social structure capable of containing and supporting both the former and the latter: Grup d’Anàlisi. After years of affiliation in national and international group associations, he establishes with a small group of colleagues Grup d’Anàlisi Barcelona as a Cooperative Society of Services, a group of reference to sustain and support the future group investigations in different ambits.

Although Juan Campos may not have conceived of GdAB in this way, arriving at the present stage of elaborating this Blog, it becomes almost inevitable to think of it as a transitional space of cultural experience for human beings as group creatures, in a similar way that Winnicott defined it for the individual sphere. In the same line, this Blog, in turn, is a transitional space created for encounters where dialogue is possible and where our shared problems can be discussed and elucidates.

Two events of the late eighties contributed significantly to the development and creation of Grup d’Anàlisi. One is the contact with Pat de Maré, author and investigator of the possibilities of the large group. Juan invited Pat in 1988 to share his thoughts and practice with a group of colleagues first in Barcelona and afterwards in the yearly symposium of the Spanish group society SEPTG in Pamplona, a society that had celebrated a single large group experience in 1976. The two-day Barcelona encounter had an enormous and long lasting “large group effect” on the future projects and activities of the recently founded GdAB, something amply reported in this Blog.

The other is that through a series of circumstances Juan Campos, also in 1988, establishes contact with The Lifwynn Foundation created by Trigant Burrow in the mid-twenties and with the two members of the original group still alive: Hans Syz, then president, and Alfreda S. Galt, then secretary of the foundation. This was an encounter of like-minded groupanalysts which led to a decade of mutually enriching collaboration and correspondence in detail reported in this Blog.