The approximation of  Juan Campos

Juan Campos —a Spanish-Catalan physician, psychoanalyst and groupanalyst, trained on the side of Foulkes in 1958-59; and in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and analytic grouptherapy at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health New York (1959-63), then the first training program of this kind in the world— centered his interest on the practice and investigation of the group of professionals dedicated to group work and named the group formed by him and interested colleagues, in Catalan, Grup d’Anàlisi Barcelona[1]. In 1989, this definition implied various questions.

In first place, the work of  this group of professionals is analytical, this is it is in line with analytic authors and investigators as are Freud, Burrow, Foulkes, Pat de Maré and others.

In second place, to include Barcelona in the foundational denomination points to one of the links with the Group Analytic Society (London) of Foulkes in as much as considering that the geographic-historical context is important in the production of ideas and practices, encouraging future groupanalysts to take this into account.

Thirdly, the most important implication of this denomination is that more than putting emphasis on the groupanalytic methodology it nuts emphasis on the analysis and investigation of the very same group of professionals and persons interested in groupanalysis. This interest in the professional groups leads Juan Campos to differentiate three types of groups which he denominates respectively group of identification, group of pertainance (to which one pertains) and group of reference [2]. Grup d’Anàlisi Barcelona develops as a group of reference [3] and more than offering models of identification it promotes the development of a group culture, a change still outstanding in the pass from psychoanalysis to groupanalysis. The function of “referent” implies promoting “an operative groupanalysis applied to multi and transdisciplinary situations in which the analytical process of understanding, explaining and comprehending has the objective of operating on the process itself in a way that the explanations and understanding can change and in fact change through the development of a convergent epistemology and methodology. In this sense, GdAB establishes itself as an operative base of all the projects and assures the alternating shift between virtual and presencial groups, between dialogue and written elaboration, between small groups and larger groups.

And finally, Grup d’Anàlisi Barcelona takes on board the discoveries of  its forerunners as are for example the social unconscious and the “societal” plexus of Burrow [4], the mind as transpersonal processes in Foulkes[5][6] , the ones emerged from the investigation in large groups by Pat de Maré and others[7]. This point of view implies an historical conception as the frame of reference of the understanding of the development of groups and the individuals that compose them [8].