Psychology

#nprbloggers - postlude

Twenty-four hours ago, I was sitting at NPR Studios in Washington DC with a group of other bloggers waiting for the election returns to start coming in. It was a mixed group in many ways, male and female, white and black, young and old, conservative and liberal. We all sat with our hopes and fears as we waited for the first polls to close.

The evening went by. We talked amongst ourselves. We took tours of NPR studios. We made snide comments about some of the gimmicks the major networks were using to fill the time before the results were known.

The storyline proceeded as expected and the story about a substantial win by Sen. Obama wasn’t really unexpected news. The bigger news, the bigger story, is what our reactions have been. The conservative bloggers morosely closed up shop soon after Sen. Obama was declared the winner. The liberal bloggers, many of them adjusting to the new moniker President-Elect Obama, hugged one another, and then sat transfixed as he addressed our country. When the speech was over applause erupted amongst the bloggers.

On Twitter, I had received news that U Street was awash with jubilant Obama supporters. The Metro stops running at midnight, and there seemed to be no available cabs, so I walked a mile and a half from NPR studios to a friend’s house on T Street. As I walked, I heard endless horns honking and innumerable shrieks of joy. I ran into my friend on the street as he and some of his other friends were heading from one celebration to the next.

As I got closer to U Street, the cacophony of horns and shrieks as compounded with the sound of fireworks going off. It felt like New Years, a time when everyone celebrates a chance to start over. It felt like being in Little Italy years ago, when Italy had won the World Cup, one of those long and hard fought battles where people wondered when victory would ever be grasped. It felt like St. Patrick’s Day on Fifth Avenue, when everyone is at least a little bit Irish.

Yet before I had left the studios, I had spoken with a few of bloggers. Two mixed race couples were part of the group and they noted how as we talk about racial issues in our country, and have made a significant step forward, the issue of mixed race couples has been avoided. We talked about the many difficult challenges that face President-Elect Obama and our country over the coming days.

I, too, have been overwhelmed by joy at this momentous turning point. Yet I remain keenly aware of the difficulties making ends meet and I wondered about all this jubilation.

Today, I spoke with my daughter who has a friend from Japan that has been confused and frightened by all the jubilation. No, this isn’t normal. This is a unique election. It is the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech. It echoes Nelson Mandela’s election as President of South Africa. It is a profound change of course from the last eight years. It is a triumph of hope over fear. Perhaps it is the response to September 11th that we have been waiting for, for so long.

Yet, I too, have wondered about this outpouring of exuberance. What does come next? Will this energy be focused into a new type of civic service? What will happen when the problems we face are not fixed as quickly as some would hope? What about all of the conservatives who are disappointed, bitter or angry at the results? After all, over fifty million Americans did vote for Sen. McCain. One conservative activist encouraged his friends online stating that the 2012 campaigns start today.

Back home, I have read through a smattering of the emails that have piled up while I was gone. I was struck by the raw emotion without a lot of reflection by many of my friends who are group psychotherapists. It seems everyone is caught up in the moment. It is a very special moment, and I hope everyone savors it, but I also hope that we can reflect on what all of this really means and what we need to do next. What are your thoughts?

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Large Groups and the Internet

I approach the Large Group in a manner very similar to how I approach the Internet. Let me explain what I mean by this, why I am saying it and why I think it is important.

I should start by explaining what I mean by the “Large Group”. I’m not talking about a crowd at the mall, at a rally, or even at a party. I am referring specifically to a Large Group as understood in the traditions of Group Relations or Group Analysis, particularly as talked about by group psychotherapists.

You see, I’m on a mailing list of group psychotherapists. It seems like most of the group psychotherapists focus on small groups, say between six and twelve people that meet on a regular basis for therapy. Yet other sizes of groups, median groups and large groups are also sometimes used. I’m not sure what size a group must be to be a median group or a large group, nor have I really managed to understand the difference between the Group Relations tradition, growing out of the work of Wilfred Bion or the Group Analytics tradtion growing out of the work of S.H. Foulkes, yet I don’t believe this especially matters for this blog post.

My first experience with the Large Group was at a Group Relations conference in the late nineties in Massachusetts. I had been working at a large European financial institution and was challenged by the matrix-managed politics around the technology for the firm. I often flew to Europe to negotiate IT strategies and then would come back to the United States and try to get the negotiated strategies implemented.

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About Authority

(Originally published at Greater Democracy.)

One of the mailing lists I am on is hosted by a 501(c)3 in the United States. Among other things, it means that the hosting organization cannot actively support specific candidates in U.S. elections. This resulted in an email from their general counsel’s office warning about political discourse on the mailing lists. It generated a lot of interesting discussions, and I sent an email to the list about the larger issues that this has generated. I’ve modified the email to make it more generic, and present it here.

It seems like some of the posts recently get to what I find the most fascinating issue around politics, psychology, and group dynamics, which is how we understand authority.

To many people, the President of the United States is the ultimate human authority figure. The people of the United States are in the process of deciding who will wear that mantle next. As such, the campaign is about much more than just issues, personalities, or parties.

This brings us to the issue of how each one of us, individually, understands and confers authority on others, as well as how people in positions of authority attempt to maintain authority.

To what extent is authority granted from above, whether we talk about the divine right of kings, or simply the authority conferred on people as a result of playing by the rules of existing governing authorities and receiving their blessing, in the form of degrees, credentials, licenses etc? To what extent is authority granted from below, from people whose trust and respect we have earned?

I don’t want to promote black and white, or red and blue thinking on this. Indeed, it seems like authority comes from a mix of above and below, and the important question is, where do you stand on the spectrum.

From my writing, it should be fairly clear which end of the spectrum I tend towards, and if my writing doesn’t give it away, the fact that I often wore a T-shirt saying ‘Question Authority’ might be another useful clue.

So, let us take for a moment, a look at the question of authority as it relates to the ‘prohibition on political activity’ on the mailing list. The Associate General Counsel for the non-profit sent this message to List Managers. She focused on authority from above, she notes her credentials, as Associate General Counsel, which is an authority granted upon her by the organization that employs here. She sends the message to the managers of the lists, again working from the top down.

Then, the manager of the list sends the message to the list itself and there is some rebellion. The rebellion is from the bottom up.

And the sign says `long hair freaky people need not apply`

Now, let’s take this a little bit further into the realm of the political. People in power, as a general rule, do not give up power willingly or easily. They focus on the authority granted from above as a means of maintaining their power. They may even do things to discourage discourse which would threaten their power, such as promoting an overly broad interpretation of the rules concerning non-profits in the United States.

We have seen this in other areas, including the recent arrest of journalists in St. Paul, the efforts of the current U.S. Administration to centralize power in the executive branch by very broad interpretations of ‘executive power’ and by the pressing of new laws that further erode the rights of citizens.

If we look more closely, we see it in the rhetoric of the candidates, the denigration of ‘community organizers’, people who focus on empowering authority from the bottom, and the exalting of the role of ‘governor’, that is authority wielded from the top.

We have also seen it in the dismissing of people who lean towards a power structure where authority is granted from below when people who question the current power structure are labeled ‘unpatriotic’ or even ‘traitors’. We have seen it in the discourse, where critics are drowned out by people chanting ‘U S A … U S A’, which I would maintain, in the context is not about love of a country based upon democratic ideas where authority is granted from the bottom, but in a context of respecting the current authority structure. We may even see it in people equating rebelling against an overly top down authority structure with immaturity.

So, what do we do with all of this? One member of the list wrote about this saying,

Oppressive power stays in power when the citizens pass the point of no return on speaking out because they have become afraid. With no challenge to that power, the institutionalizing of oppression and the harshness and probability of the punishment increases until there is a point of no return to civic discourse.

It seems like what is most important is to encourage people to explore their own relationship with authority, and to speak out about it; to speak out against power that has become oppressive. It seems like we must create spaces where it is possible and safe for people to do such exploration and speaking.

I think the manager of this list is doing a good job in carefully navigating this for this list, but I would encourage each of you to look a little more closely about your own views about authority and power, and how it relates to this list, to your work, and to political processes worldwide.

Where are you? Mixed groups for Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

I had a wonderful weekend ‘horse camping’ with my wife and youngest daughter. I am finally home, in front of my computers and trying to reconnect and sort through thousands of emails.

I have spent a little time digging through the emails to the Group Psychotherapy mailing list and wanted to hit on several of the themes that have come up. In the discussion about online therapy, Charlie had a great line,

'Where are you?' which can be taken in so many ways. Either as a demand, a simple request or a plaintive cry.

My initial reaction is that ‘where are you?’ can also be a question showing caring, connectedness. I want to know where some of my friends on the list are. I think about Toby and her mother and her Aunt. I think of Ofra and her grandchildren. I think of Sheila, and too all of them I think of asking them ‘where are you?’ as more of an emotional, psychic temperature taking. A telling of the other, I care, I want to know how you are doing. I suspect this may be part of the aspect of constant partial attention that I talk a lot about.

Digital natives need to feel constantly connected with their friends. Perhaps some of it has to do with the age of many digital natives. Teenagers spend time trying to define their identity. Identity is tied to the groups we are part of, and as people work on defining their identity, they need to feel especially connected to their groups.

Carol had a wonderful comment about this saying

I wonder how many old issues of inclusion and exclusion get activated when one is "invited".
...
the facebook phenomenon feels very "junior high" to me when it comes to internet networking

Yeah, that sounds about right. It is probably amplified in cases because all we have is the generic text asking someone to be a friend, with perhaps a little added personal text. There is the ability to write it off as if the person didn’t get the request. There is less of the shuffling of the feet, looking away from the person out of embarrassment, shyness or fear. So, we send more messages to be connected. We explore new ways of using text. We put up pictures of ourselves on Facebook and join groups to define ourselves and the idea of simply leaving Facebook or not putting up personal information just isn’t realistic. This gets back to a discussion from Computers, Freedom and Privacy last week that I want to explore more.

However, I want to get back to the emails from my friends on the Group Psychotherapy list. In the discussion about whether of not therapists should add clients as friends on social networks, or accept friendship requests from clients may require another variable in the calculation. Are the clients digital natives? Are they digital immigrants? Is there a digital aborigine in the mix? Is it some sort of mixed group?

I suspect that accepting or declining friendship in a social network may have very different meanings to people who have grown up in a digital world, where everyone is on social networks and everyone is everyone else’s friend, from people who have come to online social networks later in life and experience them as a foreign way of connecting and communicating.

To push this a little further, Marv commented,

we encourage patients to choose therapists with knowledge of their qualifications, although it¹s startling to find how many new patient¹s are choosing therapists based only on internet research.

As I read this, I wondered how important is it for a therapist to understand the culture that a client is part of. I’m sure this is a topic that people can run a long way with. How much must a therapist understand digital culture when dealing with digital natives? Perhaps this goes back to some of the questions that Bob deals a lot with.

So, I post these as ideas for my friends to ponder.

Dangling Conversations

This morning, I have gotten up early to write a blog post about yesterday’s sessions of Computers, Freedom and Privacy, and to try and read at least some of the more important emails before I head off to today’s sessions. The Group Psychotherapy mailing list has been having some fascinating discussions which I’m trying to stay on top of.

In one email, a friend wrote about a client who spends much of her life flying. She was talking about a recently failed romance where she and her new lover flew off to some exotic destination. They had a wonderful time, yet on the flight back, her new lover jacked in to his iPod and they didn’t have a chance to talk about there relationship and what had happened to them on the sunny beaches. The therapist suggested that perhaps the lover didn’t have the skills to talk about the relationship. I presented a different interpretation. I like the way the email came out, so I’m posting it here.

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