Groups in teaching and training

The perception, the view of a groupanalyst, for the sole fact of assuming this function and attitude, is an analytical view of the groups he approaches. The possibility of groupanalysts in training of identifying with this attitude presupposes a capacity of analysis, of individual and social self-critique in view of change.

Barcelona 1973. Round table on Clinical Teaching in the training of doctors.

From then on, generally speaking, the accent of Juan’s work is more and more on a new way of training health professionals. This is reinforced by the creation in 1968 of the autonomous universities —also the one of Barcelona, Juan’s involvement in setting up the curriculum of the new school of Medicine there and his fervent interest to include in it the human sciences, particularly sociology. Influential also is the sanitary reform introduced at that time and, last but not least, the transformation of psychology from a course of the department of philosophy to a department in its own right. The latter intensifies Juan’s contact with his American colleagues who facilitate the employment at the autonomous university of American Spanish speaking professors of psychology with one-year Fulbright scholarships.  Part of Juan’s developments are  his contacts with the International Association of Sociology, the USA Offices of Medical education, the WHO and its South American branch of PAHO[1], and other related organizations of interest. Between his always prolific writings, in English he publishes “Medicine: Socialization for what?”[2] for the new journal of Social Science and Medicine. Also, writing a book review on “Freud: Living and Dying” by Max Schur[3] for this same journal, puts him on the track of understanding authors and professionals in their historical and sociological context, something which eventually leads him to become the Xenophon of groupanalysis.

The central message of this stage, from then on always present in the practice of Juan Campos, as a person, a doctor, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and a groupanalyst, is the following: The important group, the group of groupanalytic analysis, is the group in which one finds oneself in the here and now. It is there where groupanalysis is possible, or is not possible, where change is possible or is not possible, from where it is possible to propagate the change of individuals and groups connected with it. This principle relates to Juan’s maxim: “group, first cure yourself”.

During this stage in a great number of papers, Juan puts the accent on those aspects of medical education that determine the possibilities of change. He specifies that medical education, and the one of health professionals in general, finds itself on the crossroad of two principal social systems: higher education and health care. He considers that for a sanitary reform to be possible, there has to be a reform in education; this is to say, for changes to occur in the care system there have to occur changes in the training of doctors and health professionals which in turn and first of all suppose changes in the training of the educators, the medical teachers and tutors who educate the students.