On the genealogy of group analysis: Our version of the Greek context

Abstract

This article aims at pinpointing some aspects of group analysis, especially in relationship to psychoanalysis, as they have emerged and developed in the context of Greek group-analytic (and psychoanalytic) institutions. Group analysis in our country has been trapped and rigidified either as a ‘therapeutic-community-oriented’, anti-psychoanalytic polemic or as a ‘psychoanalytically-informed-group-work’ project, applied in institutional settings and attributing secondary importance to group matrix. This situation has been amplified by the prevailing psychoanalytic institutions’ tendency (in opposition to Freud’s legacy) to minimize the social origins of the unconscious processes. In our current Greek context, the Institute of Group Analysis ‘S.H. Foulkes’, has as its core aim a healing return to the original, integrative Foulkesian vision: A search for integration of contemporary psychoanalytic developments and the legacy of group analysis.