Abstract
Dascha Boronat was born on 10 March 1944 and died on 19 July 2018 after a long battle with cancer.
Dascha was in the first cohort of group analysts to be trained in Manchester. She started with the course in 1989 and graduated with the first ‘Manchester Diplomates’ in 1993. Dascha remained a dedicated group analyst, IGA and GAN member all her life, touching the lives of many people in a variety of roles.
Dascha was born and raised in Czechoslovakia. As a medical student in training, she participated in the Prague Spring period of political liberation in August 1968 and ended up fleeing to the UK, effectively exiling herself when Russia invaded.
In the UK, Dascha had to give up her ambitions to be a doctor, training instead as a nurse. She obtained her RMN qualification in 1973. Group analysis may have been able to partially compensate for the sacrifice of her ambitions to be a doctor. In the meantime, she married Gabriel, who had similarly come to the UK from Spain. They eventually settled in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, Manchester in 1979. Dascha and Gabriel have two children, Gabriel Jr and Anna and five grandchildren: Tom, Poppy, Tallulah, Oscar and Dexter.
After graduation as a group analyst in 1993, Dascha helped to develop and run the Manchester trainings. She worked on the Foundation Course, then the Introductory Course, for many years. In 1996, when Barbara Dick died, Dascha took on co-editing the GAN Magazine, Gannet. She was Convenor of the Introductory Course and then also Deputy Convenor of all the Manchester Courses. It was at this time that Dascha also co-convened the Manchester Saturday Large Group.
At the IGA, Dascha went on to do the IGA Training in Individual Psychotherapy. She then participated in admissions, putting together admissions panels in the North, among other tasks. As a member of the Management Committee of Group Analysis North, Dascha was instrumental in organizing the move from the Red House NHS provision for the GAN / IGA Courses to the private sector at Newlands.
From 2003 to 2011, Dascha worked for the THOMAS Organization in Blackburn, using group therapy with ‘her lads’ on drug rehabilitation as part of their probationary period after being released from jail. Initially doubtful about this application of group analysis in the community, she came to take a great deal of pleasure from this aspect of her work.
Dascha was an artist. She was a keen gardener and very proud of her beautiful and well cared for gardens, both in Cheadle Hulme and in Peacehaven, East Sussex, where she was living when she died.
Dascha was both a fighter and a lover. She had a clear sense of what was fair and right. She fought for parity and equality for the Manchester Qualifying Courses with London, both in terms of membership and in terms of local activities, panels, etc. She was an important element of the local forces that have formed group analysis as a national training, both in Manchester and in London. Dascha had a clear sense of boundaries. Students and colleagues also remember Dascha as kind and softly spoken. She never lost her Czech accent.
I knew her as a group sibling and as a good and constant friend. She is missed.
