Julius Guild Lectures

The Canadian Group Psychotherapy Foundation sponsors the Dr. Julius Guild Memorial Lectures which are held at the annual CGPA Conference and are open to the public.

CGPF provides the lecturer with an honorarium and publishes the lectures.

Click here for a list of lectures.

This article was initially published in the Chronicle
[1999 (Summer), Volume 14, No. 2].

Julius Guild – Tribute

The following talk was delivered by Hassan Azim MD at the 12th CGPA Conference in Edmonton October 18, 1991. It introduced the Julius Guild Memorial Lecture. Edited for space reasons.

This tribute to Julius Guild, MD is but one of many that have been written or delivered about Julius during his lifetime and since his death. In 1948 Julius was working as a civilian medical officer on an air base in Fort Nelson, B.C. While pursuing a career in Internal Medicine, he became impressed by the high incidence of what was then called psychosomatic or functional disorders. Faced with unexplainable and unrequited feelings toward him by a female patient he flew to Edmonton for advice. Here he was introduced to the concept of transference. In turn, this propelled him to spend six months in Psychiatry at the Provincial Mental Hospital in Ponoka, Alberta. By then he had reached the point of no return. So in 1950 he went to the Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry of McGill University in Montreal. During this one year of training he had his first group experience. Without prior training and without ongoing supervision, he co-led, with another resident, a psychotherapy group for male schizophrenics. This was followed by another group for men suffering from sexual disorders and yet another for women with phobic symptomatology. In 1951, Julius went to study Neurology at the Hospital queen Square in London, England. At the same time he commenced his psychoanalytic training. He spent the following two years at the Maudsley and at what later developed into the Group Psychoanalytic Society of London. During the same period, he participated in a research project under the tutelage of Sir Dennis Hill at King’s College Hospital in London on the incidence of depression in asthma and eczema sufferers treated with group psychotherapy.

In 1957 Julius returned to Edmonton to practice, and group psychotherapy never ceased to be a pivotal part of his work. Later, with the advent of residency training, he welcomed psychiatric residents to his groups as observers and co-leaders, on their own time. As his knowledge, skill, and expertise became well know, he was sought after as a trainer, consellor, consultant and therapist. With the emergence of the National Training Labs in Washington, Julius embraced the opportunity to expand his horizons in group dynamics. Elected as Life Member, he organized groups for psychiatric residents, and conducted others for counsellors, therapists and business executives and their organizations. He also encouraged many a professional to get involved in human relations and encounter groups. In the Royal Alexandra Hospital, when he served as Chief of Psychiatry for twenty years, he introduced the practice of milieu therapy and staff groups. Thus Julius’ contribution was not only to the group therapies and group dynamics but also to the whole field of psychiatry in Edmonton, in Western Canada, and indeed in the whole of North America. He was a pioneer and the fruits of his work are with us today. Therefore it was only fitting that when Julius retired as Chief of Psychiatry at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, the University of Alberta honored him with a prize in his name given annually to a senior psychiatric resident with particular skill and knowledge in group and family therapy, the latter being another area of his expertise.

Julius had been an active recruiter of psychiatrists to Edmonton. Julius stepped up his recruiting efforts which took him to the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal in 1971. This was when I first met Julius. I was invited to submit proposals for organized psychiatric ambulatory care programs, including those for a day hospital, a night hospital, a walk-in clinic and other outpatient services. Julius could not have been more facilitative of this planning. This was indicated by the memorial statements of Bill Dewhurst, then Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry for fifteen years:

“It is also a measure of [Julius'] generosity that when we were planning for external services [and] developing groups and recruiting colleagues from the east it was agreed between Julius, Hassan Azim and I that the centre would initially be set up at the University rather than the Royal Alexandra where he built up his department. It was felt that this might be better for the discipline as a whole. Julius was thus no narrow partisan sectarian concerned with territory. Rather he was devoted to the overall welfare of all psychiatric patients.”

Alberta has many CGPA members. To a large measure, this in itself is a tribute to Julius’ work. Furthermore, External Psychiatric Services of the University of Alberta Hospitals and the Psychotherapy Research Centre of the Department of Psychiatry of the same University would not be here today if it were not for Julius. The Division of External Psychiatric Services alone had more than 35 skilled group therapists. In fact, after Julius retired from the headship of the Department of Psychiatry of the Royal Alexandra Hospital in 1982, he continued to run groups in his private practice.

Thus all of us, group therapists, medical and non-medical professionals, CGPA as well as our clients and patients, owe Julius Guild a huge debt of gratitude.