This book shows the ways in which the boundaries of the basic group relations training conference model of experiential learning have been extended to provide creative, conceptual, and applied links to both management and group and organizational education, training, and consultancy practice.

In The Tavistock Learning Group: Exploration Outside the Traditional Frame, the authors attempt to expand the heuristic, theoretical, and applied dimensions of Group Relations paradigms by pairing classical Group Relations concepts with typically non-Tavistock psychology paradigms and social sciences concepts. Under the broad domain of psychologically-informed constructs, Lacanian psychoanalysis, existential philosophy and bioenergetics are applied. Under a somewhat broader range of social science conceptualization, the capacity for abstraction is linked with anti-work in groups, the large group is re-imagined as an extension of community dynamics and dysfunction, and the role of symbol systems, symbology and semiotics are examined in relation to sophisticated work groups. Lastly, non-Tavistock models of group development and conceptualization are re-interpreted and explained using a group-as-a-whole framework.

This book provides the history, theory, and practice of work discussion as developed at the Tavistock Clinic. It describes the evolution and contemporary practice of work discussion in relation to a wide range of professional work with children, adolescents, and families.

This book investigates the experiences of severely troubled children and their families, teachers, and child psychoanalytic psychotherapists working together in primary schools. The book begins by looking at children’s emotional life during the primary school years and what can disrupt ordinary, helpful social development and learning. It examines what child psychoanalytic psychotherapy is, how it works, and why it is offered in primary schools. The following chapters intersperse accounts of creative child psychoanalytic approaches with interviews with parents, carers, teachers, and clinicians. A section focusing on mainstream primary schools presents parent–child interventions for a nursery class; child group psychotherapy with children from traumatized families; and consultation to school staff, with personal accounts from parents, a kinship carer, a family support worker, a deputy head, and a child psychotherapist. Chapters then focus on alternative educational settings, featuring a school for children with severe physical and cognitive disabilities; a primary pupil referral unit; and a therapeutic school. These chapters show psychotherapy with a non-verbal boy with autism; therapy groups with children who have missed out on the building blocks of development alongside reflective groups for school staff; and child psychotherapy approaches at lunchtime and in breaks, with insights from a parent, a clinical lead nurse, a head teacher, and a child psychotherapist. Finally, there is an evaluation of evidence about the impact of child psychotherapy within primary schools. Recognizing the increasing importance of attending to the emotional difficulties of children whose relationships and learning are in jeopardy, this book will be invaluable to all those working in primary schools, to commissioners of child mental health services, to parents and carers, and to experienced and training clinicians.

Mental illness is prevalent in society with a quarter of individuals having a diagnosable mental illness. A growing percentage of these individuals develop severe disorders which incapacitate them and may leave them unemployed, lonely, isolated and untreated. In recent years, there has been a movement away from therapy, and a heightened emphasis on medicalization. This book argues that medication alone does not take away the deep emotional pain of feeling isolated and lonely, and considers the modification of the client’s social relationships as a critical ingredient in any treatment. Group Therapy for Adults with Severe Mental Illness explores a non-traditional application of treatment known as the group-as-a-whole model. This approach to group work derives from the Tavistock tradition, in which emphasis on the whole group versus any specific member makes the group a safe place to risk sharing and confronting painful issues. This text highlights the efficacy of utilizing this model in the treatment of severely mentally ill consumers in various settings including jails, nursing homes and group homes. Included in the book: -case studies using the Tavistock method -the power of group-as-a-whole work in educating mental health professionals and graduate students -the use of the model to enhance creative expression in the arts -the use of the model to understand larger social systems This text will be of value to mental health professionals, researchers and educators interested in the treatment of severely mentally ill populations in institutional settings, and individuals with a specific interest in group psychotherapy.

How can boards and members of boards reach their full potential? The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) has been at the forefront of thinking about organizations since its inception in 1947. Today, as then, the corporate world is undergoing increasing pressure to demonstrate a sustainable, generative and meaningful impact on society and employees whilst delivering improved services and products. These tensions and others are explored in this important new book, Dynamics at Boardroom Level: A Tavistock Primer for Leaders, Coaches and Consultants. In this book, the reader gets a useful framework of theory and practice that broadens vision and deepens thinking about what is happening in boardrooms. The book opens the door to the reader to a new world of board dynamics, edited by those who really understand the deeper workings of the complex human system and its work at board level. This edited volume brings together the insights and contemporary case studies from participants on the Tavistock Institute Dynamics @ Board Level programme that draws on the thinking of Tavistock scholars and practitioners and their work on the dynamics of task, role, authority and power. Edited by programme co-directors Dr Mannie Sher and Dr Leslie Brissett and their fellow Tavistock Associate Tazi Lorraine Smith, and with contributions from senior leadership practitioners and board evaluators from the government, international consultancy firms, FTSE 100 and global UN institutions, this book speaks directly to issues of our time. It represents essential reading for leaders of organizations and businesses, as well as leadership coaches and mental health professionals.

Sustaining Depth and Meaning in School Leadership: Keeping Your Head concerns the emotional and psychological experience of school leadership—in particular, the felt experience of life as a headteacher. It describes the pressures and rewards of the role, together with some of the ways that school leaders successfully sustain and develop themselves and their teams in what has become an increasingly complex, challenging, and highly accountable role. This book explores the personal experience of leading schools. Part I provides an overview and analysis of current and historical trends in school leadership and offers some theoretical frameworks for making sense of these. Part II then offers psychodynamic approaches to supporting and developing school leaders and the impact that trends in executive education continue to have on this. Part III looks at approaches to school leadership development more generally, including team development; influences from the business world; the growth of mentoring and coaching as a leadership intervention; the design and evaluation of leadership development programmes; and a case study on whole-system development. The final word is given to ten serving headteachers and deputies and their leadership journeys. This range of chapters, concepts, and perspectives will support school leaders to maintain an emotional equilibrium while navigating the multilayered tightrope of intrapsychic, interpersonal, and organizational dynamics inherent in school life. Rooted in Jackson and Berkeley’s belief that school leaders are likely to be at their best when they find their own unique and authentic way of taking up their leadership role, this book is an accessible, supportive, and developmental contribution for all those involved in education leadership.

Many people hold a piece of the puzzle of group relations, yet few people are able to put them together in a meaningful way. In this breakthrough study, Amy L. Fraher provides the most comprehensive account yet written of the history of institutes of group study. The book draws on original documents as well as extensive interviews with key practitioners. The result is a fascinating story of the complex dynamics of organizational life. Developing the construct of idea organizations - organizations designed to generate intellectual concepts, rather than to produce goods or services - Fraher examines the psychodynamic workings of the National Training Laboratories, Tavistock and A.K. Rice Institutes, as well as early psychoanalytic societies. She shows how the innovatory forces that energize these idea organizations can become the focus of inter-group rivalries, creating a cycle that puts the organizations themselves at risk. Fraher details the cycle of idea organizations through the contributions of experts in the field such as David Armstrong, Gordon Lawrence, Isabel Menzies Lyth, Laurence Gould, Eric Miller, and Kathleen Pogue White, and others. She also uses A.K. Rice's previously unavailable field notes and director's reports to provide a documented overview of group relations theory and conference methodology not offered since Rice's own Learning for Leadership in 1965. This is an accessible and absorbing study, suitable both for experts and those new to the study of groups.

‘Whiteness’ is a politically constructed category which needs to be understood and dismantled because the system of racism so embedded within our society harms us all. It has profound implications for human psychology, an understanding of which is essential for supporting the movement for change. This book explores these implications from a psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic perspective. The ‘fragility’ of whiteness, the colour-blind approach and the silencing process of disavowal as they develop in the childhood of white liberal families are considered as means of maintaining white privilege and racism. A critique of the colonial roots of psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Jung leads to questioning the de-linking of the individual from society in modern day analytic thinking. The concept of the cultural complex is suggested as a useful means of connecting the individual and the social. Examples from the author’s clinical practice as well as from public life are used to illustrate the argument. Relatively few black people join the psychoanalytic profession and those who do describe training and membership as a difficult and painful process. How racism operates in clinical work, supervision and our institutions is explored, and whilst it can seem an intractable problem, proposals are given for ways forward. This book will be of great importance to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, social workers and all those with an interest in the role of white privilege on mental health.

The publication of this book coincides with a increasing recognition that the challenges facing society and organisations are not amenable to "quick fixes". The approaches to consultancy which underpin the cases presented here are particularly relevant in this new context. The contributors are graduates of AOC The Tavistock Institute Masters Programme in Advanced Organisational Change and Consulting and their associates; and the work they describe here is a testament to the quality of that programme and the learning that participants get from it.