FOULKES (FUCHS), SIEGMUND HEINRICH (1898-1976)

Physician and psychoanalyst Siegmund Heinrich Foulkes was born on September 1898 in Karlsruhe, Germany, and died on July 8, 1976 in London.

He was the youngest child of a comfortably-off, assimilated Jewish family (the Fuchs). After service in the telephone and telegraph section of the German army in World War I, he studied medicine at Heidelberg, qualifying at Frankfurt.

Foulkes soon determined to become a psychoanalyst but first spent two significant years as an assistant to the neurologist Kurt Goldstein. The work centered on rehabilitation of brain-damaged soldiers from World War I, who were intensively studied neurologically and with methods derived from Gestalt psychology by Adhemar Gelb. Goldstein's holistic approach to the function of the central nervous system later influenced Foulkes's concept of the group: as a whole where each person represents a nodal point in the group's network, analogous to the function of the neurone in the cortical network of the central nervous system.

In 1928 Foulkes went to Vienna for psychoanalytic training and postgraduate psychiatry. His analyst was Helene Deutsch and his supervisors Eduard Hitschmann and Herman Nunberg. Paul Schilder was also a significant influence. His close friend was Robert Waelder.

In 1930 Foulkes returned to Frankfurt as director of the outpatient clinic of the newly founded Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute directed by Karl Landauer. Erich Fromm and Frieda Fromm-Reichman were colleagues. There were fruitful exchanges in Frankfurt between psychoanalysts and sociologists, as both the Psychoanalytic Institute and the Sociological Research Institute (led by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer) shared the same building. Foulkes developed a close friendship with the sociologist Norbert Elias whose theories were influential in his later group analytic theories. During this time he also became acquainted with the American analyst Trigant Burrow's writings on group analysis.

Foulkes emigrated to England in 1933. After psychoanalytic practice in London he moved to the provincial town of Exeter, where he first began group psychotherapy. He further developed group work in the British Army, notably at Northfield Military Hospital where he collaborated with Thomas Forest Main, Harold Bridger and others. Foulkes was the principal architect in transforming the hospital to a therapeutic community. Wilfred Bion and John Richman had preceded him in their short experiment in group work. In 1948 Foulkes published his Northfield experiences in his first book where he laid down the bases of group analytic theory and practice.

After the war Foulkes was a training analyst for the Anna Freud Group in the British Psychoanalytic Society and Consultant Psychotherapist at the Maudsley Hospital where he taught generations of psychiatrists the rudiments of both individual and group psychotherapy. With James Anthony he founded the Group Analytic Society and later collaborated in forming the Institute of Group Analysis, both in London.

Foulkes's approach is that of "psychoanalysis by the group"—developing the group members' therapeutic capacities as co-therapists to each other, in contrast to the approaches of Wilfred Bion and Henry Ezriel's "psychoanalysis of the group," or Franz Alexander and Alexander Wolf's "psychoanalysis in the group."

His principal contributions, as described in his book Therapeutic Group Analysis (1964) are the Matrix and the therapeutic power of mirroring. The Matrix is the hypothetical basis of all group transactions that provides the group's capacity for containment and holding. Mirroring and resonance are the group's specific therapeutic factors. The value of communication is a vital therapeutic factor as well: the ability to translate the language of symptoms into articulate, exchangeable communications. The therapist's main contribution is to facilitate this process. Foulkes valuably emphasizes the therapist's responsibility to be the "dynamic administrator," organizing and protecting the group situation, as well as his responsibilities as group conductor. Foulkes died during a seminar he was leading for his senior colleagues.

Malcolm Pines

See also: Great Britain; Group analysis; Group psychotherapy; Sigmund Freud Institute; Tavistock Clinic.

Bibliography

Foulkes, Siegmund Heinrich. (1964). Therapeutic group analysis. New York: International Universities Press.