Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

80 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
external situation mirrored and contributed to the
uncertainty within the patient himself."
The atmosphere that Bion and Rickman experienced on the
training wing resembled an anarchic rebellion, which "seeks to render
the leader powerless and without authority such that a group devolves
into disorder and confusion, without cohesive principles and
constructive purposes" (Billow, 2017). The efforts of Bion and
Rickman to unmask the neurosis by the group itself as a group
problem led, in my opinion, to the fact that the original anarchy gave
rise to a revolutionary culture that triggered its own counter-revolution
on the part of the military hierarchy of the hospital.
Parallel to the landing in Normandy, the hospital was able to
experience a radical upheaval. The patients who now reached
Northfield were no longer anti-heroes, persisting in a rebellious
attitude. They were exhausted and burnt-out heroes, victims of their
selflessness. The arrival of these injured, yet brave men took place in
parallel with the gradual dissolution of rigid hospital structures and
institutional resistance. In this phase, Northfield developed into a
“self-governing, self-responsible community” (Foulkes, 1948). In
August 1944, 91% of the patients returned to military service, of
which about 700 soldiers from Normandy reached 96% (Harrison
2000).
After the victory in Europe, these patients were also replaced
by others, mostly former prisoners of war who feared either a further
overseas obligation or a return to civilian life. They were trapped in a
solitary soldier's matrix, often in a denial. By way of example, the
episode described by Foulkes regarding the music band, whose old
members opposed the incorporation of new ones. About his role in this
phase and outside of the actual therapeutic setting, he wrote:
"This illustrates the therapist's function in a quite
informal situation. He has to fit himself into the group
and his problems as he finds them. He takes a very
active part in this case. He nevertheless creates no
dependency of the group upon him but, on the contrary,
activates them to take their problems into their own
hands.” (Foulkes, 1948)
Certainly, Foulkes himself made his own development in
Northfield. In his own words: "away from consulting room psychiatry
into living, "open air" psychiatry, into the soldier's life, the living