Group Relations conferences offer a learning methodology first developed by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in England, UK. The first Group Relations Conference was the 14-day Leicester Conference, held in 1957. Since that time the model has been adapted and developed across the world by organizations such as
GREX, OFEK and various other organizations in over 25 countries. Participants say that the learning is as profound now, as it was in 1957. The integrity of the model has continued to be robust and stimulating even when offered in shorter conferences. More recently, courtesy of the COVID-19 lockdowns, online group relations conferences have taken place. These have been experienced as creating the conditions for study of the dynamics between groups and individuals
in as powerful ways as on-land conferences. Bion thought of the psychoanalytic dyad as a specialized group and thus found a theoretical and clinical continuity between the private self and the group self (our narcissism and our socialism as termed by Bion). Both are studied from a psychoanalytic situation where the analyst or consultant enter into an intersubjective field and occupies a role to receive and harvest transference from the individual or the group. In both, the consultant/analyst relies on his or her countertransference to “metabolize” the projections across a role boundary. A distinguishing feature of the group relations model is that it is experiential learning and yet explicitly offers no therapeutic intent.
During a conference participants and consultant staff will create a temporary institution to experientially study covert and overt group processes through participating in groups that vary in size and structure. All groups will have the primary task of studying the unfolding experience of the group-as-a-whole in the here and now. The study may include how elements of diversity such as individual identities of race, class, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and educationlevel are manifested and used consciously and unconsciously in groups.
Some of the questions we might explore through the medium of group relations:
What is being called forth from the profession at this time?
How can the discipline, rigor skills and talents of the analytic community be engaged in service to that call?
How might the profession transition if there were a shift toward exploring the culture and the society in the consulting room, as well as the “presenting individual”?
