PROGRAMME

 Linde Wotton (UK) 

“Group Analytic Identity as an Act of Imagination: Looking Back and Looking Forward”

In few professions is one’s identity seen as so fundamental to professional practice as in group analysis and this has implications – especially as, for many, it is linked with the idea of finding a home – when we start to contemplate closing our groups/ stepping down / passing on responsibility to the next generation, and moving on to the next phase of our own life – with, we hope, new possibilities but also, of course, closer to death and therefore even more precious.

I intend to use musical illustrations and the image of the oak tree to look at this process and to share my personal experience of leaving various professional identities behind and re-inventing myself. Memory is an act of imagination and without it, we would not be able to imagine a future.

Gerhard Wilke (UK) 

“Group Analysis in Organizations”

In many organisations today, strategy is no longer passed down from top to bottom. That is why strategic dialogue groups, learning circles, problem-solving workshops and working parties on corporate development are becoming part of the organisational culture. In addition, many managers have had to say goodbye to the fantasy of having total control. Nowadays, managers often interpret their leadership role as a coach, mentor or boundary worker to legitimise their authority through the analysis of critical incidents. 

In this development, organisational integration is no longer supported by the system, the bureaucratic rules and the charisma of the boss alone, but results from the cultivation of relationships, the creation of matrix-like networks and the building of a community culture across the organisation. At this point, the „additional value” of group analysis for today’s organisation becomes clear. 

Tomas V. Kajokas (Lithuania) 

“Circle of Life – Through the Lens of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents”

Though Strachey’s translation of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents uses „circle of life,” Freud’s original German term, Lebenskreis, generally means being surrounded by others. Everyone is either inside one or more of these circles, outside them, or even beyond them, analogous to Freud’s concept of „beyond the pleasure principle.” From a dynamic perspective, the phenomenon of repetition-compulsion evokes the image of endless circling, which can become either a meaningful hermeneutical experience or an impasse in one’s life or in therapy. I also argue that Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents tackles the idea of the „circle of life,” viewing it from the perspective of humankind and adding the extreme force of the death drive.

Heribert Knott (Germany) 

“The Future of Group Analysis. The Legacy of a Retiring Group Analyst”

At the end of my professional life as a group analyst and psychoanalyst, I am thinking about the really important things. I had the opportunity to get to know group analysis from very different perspectives. In addition to my clinical work, I was fortunate to be able to work for many decades in a key position in the German healthcare system for group psychotherapy in general – not just group analysis.

I was predisposed to do this insofar as I was able to complete very good training in group analysis in the 1980s and the results of this training were able to flow into EGATIN with its ETS, for example. This would not have been possible without the further development I experienced in London, both in psychoanalytic and group-analytic terms. I was able to devote myself to questions about the nature of human beings as part of a group and so I had certain insights that I would like to share:

• The basic group constitution of the human being as the basis for everything.
• The 3 levels of group activity (Meltzer – Bion – Foulkes)
• The music of a group as the most important way to understand a group.
• The difference between individual therapy and group psychotherapy and the treatment-related consequences.
• The dangers of the successful group leader.

My concern for the future of our profession is the fashionable trivialization of the possibilities of psychotherapy through the promotion of short-term therapies.

Kristian Valbak (Denmark) 

“There Is a Time for Everything”

The talk will address the difficulties leaving working relations and the feelings of being nearer to the end of the road. Contemplations will be about achievements and losses, recognitions and reconciliation in a professional life. What was the meaning, the drive and the ambitions? Did we also get the roses, not only the bread?