Symposium: The Making of a Modern Group Analyst

Dr. Bernstein: (To audience) The three people sitting on the platform with me, plus Dr. Hyman Spotnitz (who though invisible is also with us in spirit), considering all of the groups they have led and all of the years they have practiced, have each probably treated more people in group analysis their lifetimes then almost anyone else in our profession.

I am sure all of you know some of them. Some of you know all of them. But I know that not all of you know all of them. So let me introduce you first to Dr. Phyllis Meadow, a founder and Dean of Research at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies; and next, to Dr. Leslie Rosenthal, the Dean of Group Therapy at the CMPS; and finally to Dr. Louis Ormont, a founder and faculty member of CMPS and the founder and director of the Center for the Advancment of Group Studies.

All of us have been associated with modern psychoanalysis since its inception, and all us have matured under the guidance and tutelage of Hyman Spotnitz. We have known each other along time and we have a lot in common. We have elected not to have formal presentations,

but to try to relate to each other on the platform and to relate to you in the audience. In the course of talking to each other, and with you, we hope to show and tell you about modern group analysis.

Our first task will be an endeavor to trnasform the individuals assembled here on the platform and those in the auditorium into a group. This introduces the very first fundamental problem in group analysis. How does an aggregate of individuals assembled in the same geographical space differ from a group? And when does such an aggregate become a group? What distinguishes a group from people in proximity with each other? What magic happens that transforms four separate i