Presentation

Usually the annual editions of Argo’s journal Group: Homogeneity and Differences and the quarterly editions of the journal Funzione Gamma of the Sapienza University of Rome, which on the occasion of this ‘historical’ edition have collaborated on a common issue, publish research on general and current group issues and problems. The main inspiration of the editions is, in short, to strengthen the group bond by sharing the thought that represents it and to keep research alive. In this issue, which has been demanding and is voluminous, it is rather History that imposes its framework and gives a perspective to the elaboration. The word itself, History, is imposing. The great Greek historian Thucydides called it Treasure Forever (ktema eis aei). If the word history is alive and relevant, then there is the experience of the present. The demand for ‘historicity’ has resounded in the exchanges between authors and editors throughout this year of preparation: the group of before and now, the small or large group, or global, of now; the theoretical group, or as a cure (Neri, Cortina 2021); the group of the mind; the working group, declined in various formats, or in applications. History, the account. We live, however, in an era in which, on the contrary, it is topicality that is pressing, it is the present that is most recommended, to be identified, confronted, understood or opposed, or aligned with. Researching the genealogies and consulting the evolutionary stages of such a general process is not only arduous, it is impossible. Thus, the various contributions in this edition of Group Psychoanalysis: An Account of 50 Years of Work present multiple formats, multiple intonations of discourse, and even a certain sequential disorder and editorial unevenness – or preservation of originality. The privileged scheme, suggested by Giancarlo Di Luzio, whom the Argo association would like to thank here by including him among Argo’s historical honorary members, Claudio Neri and Bob Hinshelwood, who have accompanied us for years up to this point – has been that of the Interview – or dialogue, or group conversation, or video call, or written conversation. To rethink the group, its formats, its declinations is almost dizzying, if we think that throughout our existence we are part of groups, we enter and leave them, and the first is precisely that of our physical and mental origin, and its social inscription. In today’s difficult times, the transition group seems to have become so narrow and generalised that it almost simplifies our idea of belonging. What future for the group? is the urgent question that remains. After the ‘history’, not so much sequential but more in terms of different images that this edition has frescoed with the generous collaboration of the Authors, identifying scattered sides, different contexts, niches, specific, shared, or differentiated group languages, here now is the edition that tells the interest of the group and to the group, and that makes the idea that the present history creates the future valuable.