Event Registration
Group as Form, a Deep Study Session with Groups Group
Admission
- $100.00
Location
St. Mark's Church
East 10th Street
New York, NY 10003
Room Number: Parish Hall
Building Number: 131
East 10th Street
New York, NY 10003
Room Number: Parish Hall
Building Number: 131
Summary
Friday, November 14
7-10pm ET
In-person, St Mark’s Church
“No individual, however isolated in time and space, can be regarded as outside a group or lacking in active manifestations of group psychology.”
—W. R. Bion
Groups group is a collective of clinicians, organizers, writers, artists, and scholars interested in group dynamics in the everyday life of social movements. This project developed from a shared experience: groups we believe should exist and succeed—from autonomous collectives to large organizations—struggle with difficult and often unexamined inter-psychic group dynamics. We draw from a range of literature and approaches including psychoanalysis, systems thinking, and leftist traditions to build a shared vocabulary of concepts that help us notice and name latent group dynamics.
This deep study session will provide opportunities for participants to reflect on various dimensions of institutional and group life. How do groups come together and come apart? What dynamics contribute to group breakdown? In what ways do unconscious processes shape group norms? To what extent do individual members hold feelings and desires on behalf of the group as a whole? How does authority and leadership circulate within a group? What might these modes of inquiry have to tell us about organizing for social and political change?
Throughout the workshop, participants will be introduced to methods for investigating the mess of group experience. Engaging in experiential exercises, we will generate case studies as jumping off points for collective study. Together we will listen to, narrate, and map experiences in groups, to help us investigate conscious and unconscious aspects of groupness.
Event Registration is closed.
7-10pm ET
In-person, St Mark’s Church
“No individual, however isolated in time and space, can be regarded as outside a group or lacking in active manifestations of group psychology.”
—W. R. Bion
Groups group is a collective of clinicians, organizers, writers, artists, and scholars interested in group dynamics in the everyday life of social movements. This project developed from a shared experience: groups we believe should exist and succeed—from autonomous collectives to large organizations—struggle with difficult and often unexamined inter-psychic group dynamics. We draw from a range of literature and approaches including psychoanalysis, systems thinking, and leftist traditions to build a shared vocabulary of concepts that help us notice and name latent group dynamics.
This deep study session will provide opportunities for participants to reflect on various dimensions of institutional and group life. How do groups come together and come apart? What dynamics contribute to group breakdown? In what ways do unconscious processes shape group norms? To what extent do individual members hold feelings and desires on behalf of the group as a whole? How does authority and leadership circulate within a group? What might these modes of inquiry have to tell us about organizing for social and political change?
Throughout the workshop, participants will be introduced to methods for investigating the mess of group experience. Engaging in experiential exercises, we will generate case studies as jumping off points for collective study. Together we will listen to, narrate, and map experiences in groups, to help us investigate conscious and unconscious aspects of groupness.