Group Relations conferences offer opportunities to learn about group, organisational and social dynamics; the exercise of authority and power; the interplay between tradition, innovation and change; and the relationship of organisations to their social, political and economic environments. This book, the fifth in a series of Tavistock Group Relations Conferences, contains a collection of papers presented at the fifth Belgirate conference, plus three additional papers reflecting on and making sense of several participants’ conference experiences. Taken together, these chapters study the discourse of Group Relations conferences as well as reflecting on the changing nature and shifting patterns of this discourse. In Doing the Business of Group Relations Conferences, authors reflect on the vicissitudes of meanings this expression generates.

This book examines the Tavistock tradition of using group relations conferences as temporary training organizations for groups and institutions, and how those can inform and enrich the theory and practice of experiential learning more generally. First, this book analyses the structures, rituals, and beliefs of group relations conferences, drawing on the author’s learned experience in the field, followed by meditations extending to broader areas, such as the social nature of corruption, martial arts, Western culture’s longing for creativity, and the use of drawing in social science research. It addresses the tension between psychoanalysis and systemic theory in group relations thinking, refining and re-defining key concepts of the practice, challenging notions of dependence and dependency, performative poetics, learning, the politics of power, nostalgia, and the unspoken reasons for the wish to join conference staff teams. It offers a critique of the polarity concerning terms such as spontaneity, the sense of mystery, openness to the unexpected, and trust in unconscious processes, as opposed to the desire for certainty and the confusion, anxiety, and aggression evoked when groups find themselves without familiar signposts. Drawing on his thinking developed over the course of a professional life as organizational consultant, artist, designer, teacher, researcher, and poet, the author invites the reader to challenge boundaries towards a less inflexible and defended engagement with the Other. The metaphor of bricolage, an activity that inspires creativity and originality, suggests possible ways of putting known things together to approach new meaning as provisional and shifting. The many strands thus gathered reveal new dimensions of group life that crucially affect our everyday living and surviving, both as individuals and as members of society. This work will allow psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group therapists, organizational consultants and trainers to put the lessons learned from group relations conferences into everyday practice.

The unconscious dynamics that surface in groups when authority is exercised are of paramount importance in Group Relations Conferences; this volume addresses these considerations through research findings and speculation on the future of Group Relations both within conferences and outside of them. This is the sixth instalment in a series of books based on Tavistock Group Relations Conferences and contains a collection of papers presented at the sixth Belgirate conference. Combining chapters on theory and practice, this volume delivers a meditation on the relationships between the physical spaces we inhabit or co-create, the psychic, inner or spiritual space and the liminal space in-between. Group Relations provides a window of understanding into why inequity and intergroup hostilities pervade the modern world alongside a method that illuminates how people consciously and unconsciously contribute to these tensions, whether personally, in groups or in organisations. This will be an invaluable resource for practitioners, academics, and scholars of Group Relations, as well as managers and organisational members wanting to learn more about how Group Relations methods can contribute to their organisational success.

This book reflects the culture of the Belgirate Conference, namely combining traditional and experiential modes of developing new ideas and knowledge; and in order to further the field of Group Relations. It contains the collection of papers presented at the conference plus two additional papers.

This book, the third in a series based on the Belgirate conferences, deals with the personal as well as the organisational journeys of Group Relations practitioners and examines these through the lens of tradition, succession and creative application.

This book provides an introduction to systems psychodynamic theory and its application to organisational consultancy, research and training, outlining systems dynamics methods and their historical and theoretical developments. Systems Psychodynamics is an emerging field of social science, the boundaries of which are continually being refined and re-defined. The ‘systems’ designation refers to open systems concepts that provide the framing perspective for understanding the structural aspects of organisational systems. These include its design, division of labour, levels of authority, and reporting relationships; the nature of work tasks, processes and activities; its mission and primary task; and the nature and patterning of the organisation’s task and sentient boundaries and the transactions across them. This book presents a critical appraisal of the systems psychodynamics paradigm and its application to present-day social and organisational difficulties, showing how a holistic approach to organisational and social problems can offer a fresh perspective on difficult issues. Bringing together the theory and practice of systems psychodynamics for the first time, this book provides an examination of the systems psychodynamics paradigm in action. This book gives an accessible and thorough guide to understanding and using systems psychodynamic ideas for analysts, managers, policy makers, consultants and researchers in a wide range of professional and clinical settings.

The Handbook of Research Methods in Organizational Change offers innovative and practical information to aid in the successful implementation of research methodologies. Written by a collective of experienced scholars, it provides inspiration for future academics wishing to advance research into human system changes.

This book focuses on the hallmark or approaches of the Tavistock Institute—combining research in the social sciences with professional practice in organisational and social change. It shows how consultant and client system are partners in the process of organisational analysis and design.

This book presents a sort of angsty identity crisis and offers many clear illustrations of the multiple useful and relevant applications of group relations in different parts of the world, reflecting on the theory of group relations and its relevance to contemporary phenomena.

All the contributors to this compilation knew Bion personally and were influenced by his work. They include: Herbert Rosenfeld, Frances Tustin, Andre Green, Donald Meltzer and Hanna Segal.Wilfred R. Bion has taken his place as one of the foremost psychoanalysts of our time, yet it is only within recent years that the impact of his achievements are being felt. His death has stilled his pen and voice but demands a restatement of his view by those who have been most influenced by him. Bion's greatness lay, not only in the odd vertices of his incredible observations, but in the resources of his epistemological vastness, his respect for truth obtained in the disciplined absence of memory and desire, and his paying such scrupulous attention to and interpreting of recombinant constructions he achieved with mental elements their functions, and their transformations. His was the Language of Achievement, which is the tongue begotten by patience. Of note is his introduction of Plato's theory of forms and Kant's categories into psychoanalytic metapsychology, to say nothing of his mathematical, group and religious theories.