Experience In Large Group Research Articles

The use of a discrete large group in a conference setting as consultation and community building

The aim of this paper is to describe the use of a discrete, two session large group in an organizational conference setting (of the Faculty of Medical Psychotherapy), which gave insight into unconscious systemic dynamics that affect the organization. In line with a tradition of the use of experiential large group experiences in organizational settings, we illustrate how such a group can be used as a consultative process through bringing forward fresh insights with a compelling emotional intensity and in community building through sharing experiences at a time of stress in mental health services with feelings of increasing isolation. Such insights can aid the organization and its elected officials in leading and developing strategy, whilst community building can lead to collective responsibility-taking and development of collegial relationships which serve to reduce isolation. We clarify different possible functions of the experiential large group in organizational conference settings including consultation regarding systemic dynamics, community building and affective integration of learning.

Mountain or river? — A response to Emma Reicher’s article ‘Approaching the mountain: A journey into the wilderness of large group thinking’

Emma Reicher’s article is stimulating and highly complex and fills a gap in the literature on large groups. It is unusual in studying the large group experience from the perspective of a participant, and it also reviews the literature and poses a number of fundamental questions on this practice. The present reviewer has chosen to comment on and discuss three of them: i) who does the large group experience belong to?; ii) the influence of psychoanalysis on the large group practice and theory; and iii) essentialism and contextualism in the conception of the human being. In her conclusion, the author compares two metaphors for the large group, a mountain and a river, and opts for the latter. The image of the river clearly depicts the fluid nature of the large group as a process, which must be experienced in order to be known.

The Large Group Experience: Affiliation in a Learning Community

ABSTRACT This article is designed to orient prospective members of a large group convened for educational purposes. The authors frame the experience as one of affiliation within a learning community, emphasizing relational processes to facilitate group-as-a-whole understanding, civic mindedness, and systemic change. They provide an historical overview of large group work, a description of basic learning goals and relevant concepts from social psychology, and an elaboration of their relational team model of consultancy. A summary of the large group convened at the Annual Meeting of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, AGPA Connect 2018, includes in-session material and integrative commentary. Reflective questions are offered to help readers consider the relevance of large group learning to their professional development as group therapists.

Awareness of ethical issues in medical education: an interactive teach-the-teacher course.

Purpose: We conducted an international, interdisciplinary teach-the-teacher course to sensitize physicians from different countries to ethical issues in medical education. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of this course.Method: Before and after participating in a short session on ethical issues in medical education, 97 physicians from different countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe completed a self-assessment questionnaire on their competence and interest in this field. The short session consisted of working in small groups to identify, analyze and discuss ethical dilemmas described in case vignettes adapted from published examples or written by medical students. In addition to the questionnaire, we conducted a large-group experience to explore four basic orientations of participants in ethical thinking: relativism, intentionalism, consequentialism, and absolutism.Results: We found a significant self-perceived increase in the participants’ ability to identify and describe ethical issues and students’ dilemmas, in their knowledge about these issues and teaching professionalism, and in their ability to describe both students’ perspectives and teachers’ and students’ behaviors. In addition, participants’ feeling of understanding their own culturally learned patterns of determining what is right and wrong increased after taking part in the course. The four contrasting basic ethical orientations showed no significant differences between participants regarding nationality, age, or gender. Conclusion: Ethics of education is an important issue for medical teachers. Teachers’ self-perceived competence can be increased by working on case vignettes in small groups.

Group Time Experiences: Belonging, Being and Becoming Through Active Participation Within Early Childhood Communities

The National Quality Standards (NQS) as part of the Australian National Quality Framework were developed in 2011 and included several references to the organisation of small and large groups within early childhood settings (ACECQA 2013). The NQS act in tandem with the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) (DEEWR 2009) and are the basis by which early childhood centres are assessed for accreditation in Australia. This paper draws upon current research with early childhood educators as they struggle to understand the new concept of ‘intentional teachers’ within this new regime. There also appears to have been a dramatic shift in the understanding about how large and small groups operate within centres. As the accreditation process unfolds, some early childhood centres have been advised to abandon large or whole group work. At the core of the EYLF are the notions of ‘being, belonging, becoming’, locating young children as part of a community of learners within a democratic society. It therefore appears that tensions and contradictions are emerging between the fundamental principles of the EYLF as they are juxtaposed against the requirement of the NQS. Critical Pedagogy of Place provides a theoretical framework in which to interrogate the ways some early childhood educators interpret intentional teaching both in terms of the organisation of spaces in early childhood centres and the organisation of the children as they inhabit those spaces (Gruenewald 2008). This paper argues that the possible abandonment of large group experiences runs the risk of disconnecting children from their communities and the relationships they form as social participants. Furthermore, it is argued that whole group experiences are crucial elements that facilitate a child’s identity and active citizenry.

Commentary on Woodger’s ‘Large Group Work: Identity Development and Its Significance for Achieving Race Equality’

Introduction What is exciting about Woodger’s article is that it demonstrates how an experiential large group in a training context can be the instrument for effecting change. Change not only in the members as they get to know themselves better, not only in the learning that takes place about group dynamics or the subject of their education, which is stated to be about understanding of racism and identity in this case, but the beginnings of social change. I will comment on the group analytic concepts and practices that relate to this work, in particular the concept of the social unconscious, I will introduce Agazarian’s notions of stereotypical and functional subgroups, and end with some examples of large group experiences from the large group that is held at the Institute of Group Analysis, another training context that uses large groups.

The Invited Presenter: Outrageousness and Outrage

I describe aspects of a multimodal presentation sponsored by a professional organization of group psychotherapists, entailing lecture and discussion, a small demonstration or fishbowl group, and a large group experience. As the invited presenter, I was being counted on to attract attendees, to stimulate and maintain their interest, and to draw enthusiasm to the host organization and its future conferences. This required, in short order, promoting cohesion, establishing norms, and creating a safe enough culture to embrace challenge, to take risks, to learn, and to seek help. Events occurring in both the larger and smaller groups were to be utilized for the benefit of the individuals and the groups themselves, to make the experience interesting and sufficiently compelling, to teach the basic principles promised by the conference’s theme, and to demonstrate technique. Dysfunction or negative consequences were to be avoided. My mode of leadership was perceived by some as positive if not outrageous, but for others it just provoked outrage. Perhaps such reactions are to be expected whenever a leader challenges a group to experience and think in new ways. I tried to utilize the ensuring controversy to illustrate the conference’s topic: loving, hating, and curiosity—group processes of resistance, rebellion, and refusal.

Being in Berlin: A large group experience in the Berlin Congress

In July 2007, the International Psychoanalytic Congress convened for the first time since the war in the former Nazi capital, Berlin. An open large group forum was held at this meeting, where attendees (Jewish, German and others) had the opportunity to explore the emotional aspects stirred up by being in Berlin. Hundreds of people participated in the event and described it as the ‘heart of the Congress’. We examine several aspects of the event, including the passions stirred, the containment of the setting, and the voices present and absent.

The Use of Large Groups to Address Cultural Differences in the Psychotherapy Community in Aotearoa New Zealand

- This paper focuses on large group experiences in the psychotherapy community in Aotearoa New Zealand as case illustrations for the themes that emerge relating to culture, identity, and large group process. The large group works to establish a new socially relational context where it becomes possible to build new personal relationships in the socio-political domain; to sit with and confront the pain that is held by the individual and the minority group and blocks thinking outside divisive positions in society. This is the work that psychotherapists in New Zealand are doing.

Sally’s Dilemma: Making Tough Choices In Collaborative Visioning

This case involves an experience in large group visioning, specifically the processes of developing and building consensus around institutional goals and objectives. It takes place at a point roughly halfway through the process. The protagonist, Sally, is the project coordinator. At this point in the process, the participants have collectively invested hundreds of hours in the creation of widely diverse ideas for the future of the university. Her dilemma is the challenge of maintaining the commitment and support of the participants as the vision is reduced to a much shorter and more focused statement.The case is based on archival data and interviews with 40 of the 300+ participants who were engaged in the process, including Sally, steering committee members, faculty, staff, and outside stakeholders (alumni and members of the board of directors). The Instructor's Manual provides key questions for future large group process consultants, OD professionals and students of organizational behavior and leadership, including references from the OD and visioning literature. An Epilogue provides the actual decision at the time of the challenge and its rationale.

Ewing sarcoma: radiation dose and target volume.

The outcome of children and adolescents with Ewing sarcoma is impacted by many prognostic factors and often measured by estimates of: event-free, relapse-free, disease-free, or overall survival. However, the preferred assessment following radiation therapy is local control. A review of large group experiences over the past several decades was undertaken to assess the optimal radiation dose and volume for patients with localized, osseous Ewing sarcoma. New approaches and techniques to improve local control were also investigated. With multidisciplinary therapy, 5-year overall local control rates range from 58 to 93%. Following definitive irradiation, they are 53-86%. Recommended radiation therapy doses are 55.8-60.0 Gy. In the postoperative setting, gross disease requires 55.8 Gy; microscopic disease requires 45 Gy. Altered fractionation schemes have not improved local control. The appropriate irradiated volume is an involved field to the pretreatment tumor volume plus 2.0-2.5 cm margin, followed by a boost to the post-induction chemotherapy tumor volume with margin. Good radiation quality control with central review improves local control. Use of an involved radiation field requires accuracy in defining tumor volume. Techniques to improve local control include risk-adapted multidisciplinary therapy, intraoperative boost radiation, and high radiation doses as delivered by 3-dimensional conformal radiation. Intensity modulated and proton beam radiotherapy may offer an advantage at special sites. Innovative uses of radiation in the multidisciplinary setting will continue to provide excellent local control, improved function, and quality of life for young patients with localized Ewing sarcoma of bone.

From Demand to Desire: What do We Offer when We Offer Group-Analytic Training?

What is offered in group-analytic training? The tentative answer is twofold. It is argued that by changing verbal communication in the group into a free-floating group discussion' Foulkes developed a consistent method for getting access to unconscious processes in groups, a method that is different from classical psychoanalysis. Implicitly, this approach is conceived of as ethical in nature, recognizing individual associations as interpretations valuable to the whole of the group. Referring to Lacan, this mode of access to unconscious processes is characterized as the step from `demand' to `desire'. The possible consequences of these assumptions in group-anayltic training institutions are discussed and a suggestion is made to include a large group experience of the training institution as a whole as an integral part of the training process.

Non-Traditional Women's Group

This paper focuses on an intensive large group experience for women that addresses issues of female identity and the cultural constructs that contribute to women's basic experience of self. It includes a discussion of self-concept and the social constructionist theory of the social, emotional, and psychological processes of the development of an individual's view of herself and the world. The author contrasts aspects of traditional group psychotherapy leadership, which tends to perpetuate society's devaluation of the feminine, with the leadership style of this workshop. The use of story and metaphor and other techniques used to achieve the workshop goals--including narrative therapy, guided imagery, movement and dance, and ritual enactment--are also discussed.

The Introductory General Course in Group Work of the Institute of Group Analysis 1993-4: A Survey of Student Backgrounds and Experience

The IGA (London) has a well-established introductory course in group analysis. Over recent years the intake has broadened to include a variety of professional groups. An attempt was made to determine the nature of the intake in a typical year (1993-4) and see if professional background was associated with response to the course. The study was performed by the completion by participants of two questionnaires, one at the beginning, one at the end. The results confirmed the broad range of professional backgrounds but not any clear differential response to the course. Overall there were high levels of satisfaction with the course, the Small Group being the most successful element, the Large Group the least. Overall the IGA introductory course was successful in achieving its aims in offering an introduction to group analysis. Criticism of the Large Group experience suggests that continued work may be required to improve student satisfaction with its role in the course.

“The unbearable embeddedness of being”: Self psychology, intersubjectivity and large group experiences

Studying the large group from a self psychological perspective is a new area of exploration. The purpose of this work is to consider an expansion of the selfobject concept to include experiences in group. The groupobject is conceived as a function which addresses the inherent group needs of the individual. Just as the selfobject serves to fill in missing aspects of the self, the groupobject fills in missing aspects of the group self. The development of this concept emerged from an ongoing large group experience. It has its roots in the idea that effective group treatment can result from the recognition and support of groupobject as well as selfobject needs.

Block training in group analysis: the Norwegian program.

Block training in group psychotherapy makes it possible to train professionals living far apart and to import conductors to an area or country lacking sufficient expertise. This article reports experience with such a training program in Norway. Training is given in blocks of 5 weekends a year, each weekend containing small group therapy, supervision, theory courses, lectures, and large group experiences. The participants were questioned about their personal and professional gains from the training. These findings and the effect of the program in relation to stated goals are discussed.

The Expression and Experience of Ambivalence in a Melbourne Large Group

In 1989, along with twenty-five other individuals interested in group dynamics, I participated in a large group experience in Melbourne, Australia. This was initiated by Dr Peter McCallum and myself following our experience in a Group-Analytic Society (London) Winter Workshop. Dr Stanley Gold and Dr Ann Morgan were the conductors. The group met for one-and-a-half hours at night on a weekly basis for five months. The following represents some of my reflections about four months after the large group experience ceased. I was invited to contribute comments at an Australian Association of Group Psychotherapy meeting. I had neither made notes during the large group sessions nor since it ended. In addition there was no communication between the conductors and myself on the topic prior to our joint formal presentation. To what degree repression plays a part in what I said I am uncertain.

The Work of the Uffculme Clinic

The Uffculme Clinic opened 25 years ago as an early psychiatric treatment and research centre and has for the past 15 years functioned as a regional centre for psychotherapy in the West Midlands. Day and in-patients participate in a psychotherapeutic regime which includes a daily analytic psychotherapy group, relaxation therapy, projective art, psychodrama and more traditional occupational and recreational therapies. A weekly community meeting has recently been extended to give staff and patients a large group experience. Patients in intensive treatment are severely affected by neurotic or personality difficulties and are only admitted if they are incapable of functioning at work or at home.

LARGE GROUP EXPERIENCE: 41 Sessions from October 1975 to August 1976

LARGE GROUP EXPERIENCE: 41 Sessions from October 1975 to August 1976