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From the editor

As editor, it can at times be a strain to find a ‘theme’, but occasionally oneÌýmiraculously arrives in your lap. This issue is primarily about groups – perhaps notÌýsurprising as groups can be considered more cost effective during these timesÌýof not only restraints but serious cutbacks, cutbacks that are beginning to affect us all.

As RD Laing once remarked, ‘treatment is about how you treat people’, and theÌýopportunity to be with others in an environment of free-association, where you canÌýcontribute spontaneously without fear of retribution, is not to be sniffed at.

Our culture of ‘results’ and planned ‘outcomes’ is a far cry from the radical beginningsÌýof psychoanalysis where the aim was to listen to the symptom until it spoke, until theÌýpatient/client emerged into the light of their ownÌý understanding. This process takes time,Ìýand now that is one thing in permanently short supply. Time has become a commodityÌýlike all others. Like food. Like time off. Like education. Like work. There is not enoughÌýto go around and consequently everything becomes more scarce and expensive.

We have become convinced that we live in conditions of scarcity and that the ‘market’Ìýcan solve this artificially created ‘problem’. It is a central belief, originally describedÌýby Adam Smith, that each person acts out of self-interest. It is also held to be anÌýincontrovertible truism that each person will act in the service of ‘growth’, that is, toÌýcontinue to amass as much as possible… and then make more – and that profit is desirable.Ìý

This applies to human resources as well, which is why work, being the means ofÌýproduction of profit and ‘growth’, has to be maximised too. This explains why most ofÌýus are probably working more hours under more pressure to see more people than everÌýbefore, who themselves are usually collapsing under enormous pressure to do more andÌýproduce more ‘work’. But is this mad factory farming actually necessary? Does it not runÌýdirectly counter to anything resembling education? Does it really have to be this way?

And if you don’t like it? Well, you know what you can do… plenty more where youÌýcame from… Staying and complaining? Take this disciplinary procedure, and a nastyÌýletter from ‘human resources’. These beliefs seem to be driving political policy in theÌýUK at the moment. George Bush’s famous opening statement at a dinner speech inÌý2000 – ‘This is an impressive crowd – the haves and the have-mores. Some people callÌýyou the elite. I call you my base’ – reminds us that this elite is now firmly the politicalÌýbase here too. Politicians can now be heard saying quite openly, ‘why should anyoneÌýpay for anybody else’s education?’

Recently, during the tuition fees protests, a group therapist was running a groupÌýwhilst a small and relatively polite riot was going on in the street below. The studentsÌýin the group reflected on this situation… to be, or not to ‘be’. Is it nobler to thinkÌýthese things through,Ìýor to take up arms andÌýdo something? (Or inÌýmodern parlance: toÌýbecome or not toÌýbecome ‘one of theÌýmovement, one of theÌýfaces’?) These mattersÌýwere reflected upon...Ìýthen about half ofÌýthem went off to joinÌýan occupation.

Dani Singer
Editor

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