M. L. J. Abercrombie

"Jane" Abercrombie (1960; 1970) investigated why medical students who were able to solve problems, when presented in a familiar format, were unable to do so when the same problems were presented in a slightly different way. Abercrombie (1969) reminds us that we rarely reflect upon our initial judgements, which are embedded in our own personality. Abercrombie found that group discussion helped these students solve such problems and, in particular, improved the ability of the students to discriminate between facts and opinions, to resist false conclusions and to bring fresh strategies to their attempts to solve new problems without being adversely influenced by past failure.

There was a clear line of development in her work that was always underpinned by her interest in educational work. She progressively developed her research and thinking from her early years as a zoology teacher through her growing involvement in Group Analysis and its application in education. Throughout her work, three themes - the selective and projective nature of perception and reasoning; the difficulty that human beings experience in changing; the subtlety and complexity of communication - continually interact with and enrich one another. She increasingly concentrated on group analysis and its relevance to and use in higher education involving "free" or "associative" group discussion as she used it in her own work with students.

She carried out pioneer research into the use of groups in learning with medical, architectural and education students, and she shared with diverse audiences in many countries her extensive knowledge and expertise as a teacher who used the methods and principles of group analytic psychotherapy. Jane Abercrombie came to these views through her contact with the psychoanalyst and Group Analyst S. H. Foulkes and in 1952 she became a founder member of the Group Analytic Society, and president of the society in 1981. This society still awards a prize in her name, the Abercrombie Prize, in recognition of the importance of her ideas.