About this event 
Welcome to the 15 th European Symposium in Group Analysis.
Our Scientific Programme, including both its Academic and Experiential components, will focus on the cycle of creativity that inspires our work with groups - a cycle that has allowed us to diversify practices across cultures, applications and human predicaments to promote growth and serve peoples' needs in all social classes and life situations. Our work ranges from the needs of psychiatric patients in some of Europe's most remote places whose lives have been transformed, to asylum seekers and refugees in metropolitan centres; forensic work in secure and specialised settings; private practice for general and specialised clientele; work in government, multi- national corporations and training programme's, medical colleges and university departments of psychology.
We give an outline here of the basic framework of the Symposium which will be enriched by what you can offer as a participant and contributor to the Academic and Experiential components of the Programme.
Framework of the Day
Each day opens with a Keynote Plenary that sets the daily theme and is followed by Experiential groups for which - as conductors - we rely on our experienced members for a vital and voluntary role. Below you will find the proforma to complete if you can volunteer to conduct a group.The afternoons are devoted to the Academic Programme built out of the wide range of contributions we anticipate from participants in the form of Paper Presentations, Sub-Plenaries and Workshops. They will demonstrate how contributors from a world-wide panel of practitioners use groups of every kind to grapple with the demands and contradictions of our time. There is a separate proforma to make a contribution to this programme. At its core is the study and demonstration of small group psychotherapy - what Foulkes called therapeutic group analysis - that will be enriched by other applications in educational, consultative and organisational group analysis. Innovations in current clinical practice will find a place alongside the challenges faced in training programmes; the extension of group therapy practice beyond the consulting room in conflict resolution and community work; the need for credibility in research and evaluation; the history of therapeutic communities beginning with Northfield and critical questions that arise today about their future.
Each day will be concluded by a Large Group, a defining feature at these Symposia in which we all meet under one roof in a unique assembly that will be convened by a partnership of experienced group analysts in Brian Boswood and Margit G. Jørgensen. There will be Poster Presentations in a Display area offering graphic, slide and film material through the day, and an active Social Programme in the evenings, providing some of the rich fare drawn from London's contemporary cultural life.
Dedication Event and Keynote Speakers
We are honoured to have with us at the Monday evening opening event, one of the original, Founding Members of the Group Analytic Society, Prof. E. James Anthony. He was co-author with Foulkes of one of the defining texts in our field. We begin the Symposium by dedicating an award to him for his Lifetime's Contribution to Group Analysis.Our Inaugural Address follows on Monday evening and is given by Justice Albie Sachs, a visionary world leader. He will introduce us to the work of Gandhi and Mandela in South Africa and give us some understanding of Sach's own remarkable contribution in the struggle to transform that society and its political system. The Symposium as a whole will be illuminated by the challenges he poses for us that can transform pain from the past into hope for the future; that question Eurocentric restrictions in psychotherapy practice; that direct attention towards the imperatives of social justice and political conciliation; and that might inspire us to extend the work of the Group Analytic Society to the Third World and to those areas of metropolitan Europe dominated by social need.
Our four Keynote Plenary Speakers will set each day's theme with presentations that open each day from Tuesday to Friday. They bring us a wealth of experience and will give participants entry to critically important areas of current group psychotherapy practice. On our first day Gwen Adshead invites us to think about clinical challenges in the consulting room, talking about her work at Broadmoor Hospital and the challenges she faces with groups for those in long-term secure care who have committed serious acts of violence. On day two, devoted to new developments in group analytic psychotherapy, Robi Friedman invites us to consider the transformative power of dreams in groups and the benefits they can yield both personally and politically, including his experience as joint director of International Dialogue Initiative for Dialogue between Muslim and Western Societies. On day three, devoted to wider social applications, Elizabeth Rohr takes us to Guatamala and the challenges she faces developing a group programme catering for the large numbers of orphans, widows, injured and displaced families scarred by war and its aftermath. On our final day devoted to training, Molyn Leszcz introduces relevant and accessible approaches to evidence-based practice in group psychotherapy currently being developed in North America. And he examines pioneering new applications for group therapy in diverse settings including treatments for breast cancer patients and responses to pandemic threats such as the recent SARS outbreak in Canada.
We look forward to attendance at the Symposium from a wide range of practitioners and contributors who will be equipped to take back to their homes, clinics and institutions a renewed sense of promise for what group analysis can offer during these times of uncertainty and anxiety. The Group-Analytic Society was founded in London in 1952 and last held its Symposium here in 1981. London, our host, is a city of paradox. Once the English capital of a vast colonial empire, it is today a European capital with one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. In walking distance of its celebrated square mile is another of urban poverty beside Thames, populated down the generations by immigrants and refugees - a location with continuing consequences for health, mental health, child development and family life that pose major challenges. Contemporary cultures struggle with conflicting tensions between globalisation and the preservation of their own identities. They are under pressure today as never before, affected by the widespread anxieties of our times - about the global economy, climate change, infectious illness, demographic ageing, food security, war, genocide and terrorism. The clinical and theoretical discipline that we have in group analysis can equip us to develop face-to-face exchange in groups of many kinds to address conflict from the level of the private and interpersonal to the current global problems of our time. We look forward to seeing you at the Symposium.