Edward Glover, John Bowlby, psychiatry, Bion, and the War Office Selection Boards—towards a context for the emergence of group analysis

This paper is a reflection on the context from which group analysis emerged in Britain during the Second World War. Edward Glover’s objections to the work of army psychiatry in a radio broadcast in November 1943, and the difficult collaboration between the War Office and psychiatrists as they sought to develop officer selection and training procedures, influenced developments in psychoanalysis, including the emergence of group analysis. It considers the response of the British Psychoanalytical Society whose members were engaged in army psychiatry work alongside colleagues from the Tavistock Clinic. Bion’s and Rickman’s collaboration and the experiments at Northfield were an outcome. The abrupt ending of the first Northfield experiment, and the development of psychiatry more broadly, prompted serious questioning within the Society about its isolationalist policies. The Society’s move to develop its training role, and to participate in post war health, mental health and welfare services was a result. Not only did it ensure the Society’s survival, but enhanced the emergence of group analysis as a discipline within the psychoanalytic project.