Figure and Ground in Group Analytic Theory and Training

Abstract

This paper was resulted from rethinking the work of the Training Committee of the Institute of Group Analysis in the late eighties. We had spent many years devising a new curriculum, visualising what it could do if it did not have an already existing curriculum and could start from scratch. What was done over previous years was to put together a curriculum based on growing experience, inevitably it represented the accretion of the years and so we played with ideas of what we could do if we could start from scratch. What we were trying to do was to grasp the totality of what we were trying to teach. This paper simply stretches out my own view of the phenomenon of group analysis, how it comes to be and its position in the context of human sciences and the history of ideas.