Koinonia

Patrick de Mare was born in London in 1916. He qualified as a doctor in 1941 and enlisted in the RAMC in 1942. After the war he became a Consultant Psychotherapist at St. George's Hospital; he set up the Group Analytic Society with S.H. Foulkes, and later established the Institute of Group Analysis and the Group Analytic Practice. He authored various publications including 'Perspectives in Group Psychotherapy' and 'Introduction to Group Treatment in Psychiatry'. Robin Piper trained as a social worker at the London School of Economics. He has worked in child and adult psychiatry and later specialised in Family Therapy at the Marlborough Family Service. He went on to train as a psychotherapist with the British Association of Psychotherapists, and the London Centre for Psychotherapy. For several years he was the co-conductor of the large group at the Institute of Group Analysis with Patrick De Mare. Sheila Thompson qualified as a psychiatric social worker in 1955 and subsequently worked at Great Ormond Street, at the Portman Clinic and the Newnham Community Mental Health Service. She has lived in East Africa working with refugees and in New York where she pursued an interest in family therapy and in the care of patients with terminal cancer. She is now a freelance teacher and writer on group work, bereavement, and terminal care. She has been a member of the Group Analytic Society since 1970 and she is a founding member of the Large Group Section. She is the co-author of 'The Group Process as a Helping Technique' (1970) with Dr. J. H. Kahn, and 'The Group Process and Family Therapy' (1998). She also contributed to 'The Evolution of Group Analysis', edited by M. Pines.

• Foreword -- Koinonia -- Introduction -- The story of the larger group approach -- The median group -- Dialogue -- Culture and Koinonia -- Object relations theory. Systems thinking and structuralism -- Ecological perspectives -- Postscript -- Spiral course of introjected, projected, reintrojected, and reprojected objects via the larger group matrix -- The psychoanalytic, the small-group, and the large-group settings -- The Three Cultures -- The Large Group Section -- The large group diary: Records of large group meetings