A GROUP RELATIONS CONFERENCE FOR PSYCHOANALYSTS, JUNGIAN ANALYSTS AND ANALYTIC CANDIDATES

October 6-9, 2023

Online Via Zoom

Introduction to the Conference

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As we face the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, social and political unrest, climate change, hate crimes, and racial and economic inequities, the fabric of society as we have known it has been transformed. The boundaries of organizations have expanded, institutional priorities have changed, existential distress and isolation have been heightened. These social tensions permeate the conscious and unconscious experience of individuals and impact their functioning in families, groups, and organizations.

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Problems in psychoanalytic institutes inevitably reflect irrational social dynamics. As analysts have expanded their involvement outside of the consulting room, institutes around the world have increasingly recognized that learning about leadership, followership, membership, and social dynamics might need to be a fourth pillar in psychoanalytic training (alongside seminars, personal analysis, and supervision). In response, over several decades in California, groups of analysts and group practitioners have introduced courses on group dynamics and a variety of related trainings to psychoanalytic institutes. This conference, the second one of its kind, emerged from their expanding collaboration to group relations organizations such as Grex, the west coast affiliate of the A K Rice institute, and the co- sponsors listed on this website.

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In this conference, and working together over four days, the staff and participants will create a temporary institution to examine multiple layers of organizational life beyond the conscious/observable to consider the more impactful and powerful dynamics that are out of awareness.

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This type of learning has direct application:

• Psychoanalysts and analytic institutes are confronted with multiple challenges related to rapidly shifting social and economic circumstances.
• The traditional dyadic analyst/analysand relationship may no longer contain the complexity of the social surround.
• The analytic profession is increasingly called upon to adapt and serve a wider swath of society.
•  Analytic institutes are stressed by problems of leadership, succession, theory, finances, and candidate enrollment

Group Relations Methodology

Group Relations Conferences are an experiential methodology first developed by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London, UK.  Derived from the study of organizations in trouble, TIHR shaped a conference design for direct learning about organizational dynamics

The conference primary task is to study the unfolding experience of the group-as-a-whole in the here and now in the service of learning about the exercise of authority and leadership in organizational life.

Unlike traditional models of learning where expertise is assigned to teachers, ​the conference offers a format for learning from experience, yours and that of others. This learning may illuminate how elements of diversity such as individual identities of race, class, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and education level are used consciously and unconsciously in groups. The conference is a setting in which these dynamics can be experienced and explored, within groups, between groups, and within the system as a whole.

Basic Premise – The Study of Authority and Leadership

We are always involved in groups.  At birth, we move from a dyad into a group– the nuclear family– and begin to face authority relations, first with parents and then with others such as caregivers, teachers, doctors, therapists, bosses, law enforcement, etc.  These experiences imprint our minds and memories with conscious and unconscious assumptions about those in charge, about the mission of the groups we belong to, and about the roles we take up, impacting how we view and collaborate with authority figures, and how we take up our own authority in relation to that of others.

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Leadership and followership are collaborative roles that are integral to the advancement of a group’s purpose. When human beings gather in order to work on a shared task, conscious and unconscious assumptions get activated, impacting how collective work unfolds. These assumptions often serve different agendas, ordinarily out of our awareness. This conference creates a temporary institution for the purpose of studying in real-time these phenomena.