The sound of silence: The non-relationship of S.H. Foulkes and Wilfred Bion

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With Dr. Dominick Grundy, Ph.D, CGP, FAGPA

4 dic 2022 05:00 PM Rome Time (CET) 

Description: There is little literature on the nonrelationship between the two leaders of psychoanalytic group therapy who had each worked at Northfield Hospital in England treating soldiers with PTSD in the 1940’s. In life these men avoided each other, essentially splitting the group psychoanalytic movement in the post WW2 war years. The hypothesis of the webinar is that their mutual avoidance was not only due to rivalry but to their social environment and formative war experiences. Unlike, say, Freud and Jung, there is no record of their communication. The webinar presents their non-relationship in a play where setting and dialogue are fictional.

Purpose: The webinar has three related goals: (1) to promote reflection on the splitting of the psychoanalytic group movement which has ramifications even today (Group Relations and Group Analysis); (2) to suggest the influence of life experience and social environment on thinkers’ ideas; (3) to use expressive arts rather than didactic methods to bring ideas to life in an educational setting.

Articulation: The webinar will consist of an introduction by me and some scenes from a zoom reading by a group of actors of my play What the Day Brings. I will use bridging comments to explain the background and story. This will be followed by discussion. The two main characters, based on Foulkes and Bion (with different names) are recalled from the underworld by the Greek god Hermes and the muses of History (Clio) and Memory (Mnemosyne) and are asked to resolve their differences. Each conducts a group of traumatized soldiers to demonstrate his methods.