Conferences
AGPA: Friday Morning Notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 08:18I'm too cheap to pay for the WiFi at the AGPA conference, so I wrote my articles yesterday, saved them on the laptop, and only this morning, uploaded them. It will be interesting to see what sort of reaction they generate. Some people seem unsure about how to deal with the press at the conference and I'm trying to walk a fine line between observing and participating and between reporting and respecting confidentiality and privacy.
Last night was the Group Psychotherapy mailing list dinner. There were over fifty people there, many of them were long time friends from the list, that I've never met face to face. People asked how they looked compared to the expectations I had developed from meeting them online. The one general difference is that everyone seemed much younger than I imagined them. I suspect that a lot of this gets to standard expectations, stereotypes and exemplars. From the list, I've developed a great respect for many of the participants. I view them as kind and wise, attributes that I normally associate with older people. One of them has recently had knee surgery, something my mother had last year, and a friends mother had the year before, so I particularly expected her to appear much older than she did.
In order to keep the front page of my blog balanced between many of my interests, I am only leaving this post on the front page right now. My other recent posts about the AGPA conference have been filed in the newly created sections, Conferences and Psychology. I would encourage people interested in the AGPA conference to follow these links to read my other articles about the AGPA conference.
AGPA - The Co-Creation of Leadership: The Interface Between Psychotherapy Groups and Large Group Political Processes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 07:48A panel that was of particular interest to me was about the co-creation of leadership. The first presenter was by Dr. Hala Tawell, President of the University of the Middle East Project in Cambridge, MA. She spoke about her work bringing together Arabs and Jews. Her talk can best be summarized by a comment she made, "We all knew the conflicts. We didn't know how much we had in common." This was followed by a paper by Dr. Rosemary Segella, in which she focused on complexity theory as it relates to large groups. She spoke about her years observing large groups and the cycles they go through. This was followed by a talk by Dr. Howard Kibel looking at projected fantasies and the political process. He explored how such fantasies might explain some of the strong reaction some people have against Sen. Hillary Clinton.
During the break, a few of us stood around and talked about the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections.
This was followed by a demonstration group. They had problems getting people to volunteer to be in the demonstration group, so in the end, I agreed to join. Eight of us sat around in a circle. We were asked to enact a meeting of leaders in a community that has been on an emotional roller coaster and now had the angry crowds at the gate. We were to explore the nature of the creation of leadership as we attempted to address the particular issue. We only had half an hour to act and there was a lot of anxiety in the group as they worked towards a solution, while at the same time, observing feelings about the emergence of leadership.
In the discussion that occurred afterwards, parallel processes with the leadership of the open session, the leadership of the AGPA and the leadership of the country were explored. Just as the demonstration group did not manage to arrive at a solution for our hypothetical community, it seemed like the issues of how leadership emerges and the role that large groups play as was not fully explored. Many of us stayed around afterwards to explore our own feelings and what we were learning from the demonstration group.
To me, it seemed clear that this is a very large subject worthy of much more exploration. It is worth noting that I cannot capture the intensity of this group in written words, in part due to the limitations of my own writing ability, and in part out of respect for the process.
AGPA - The Developmental Origins and Clinicial Implications of Security and Insecruity in Groups
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 07:46The keynote address on Thursday at the American Group Psychotherapy Association annual meeting was given by Jeremy Holmes of the University of Exeter, UK. Before he began to speak, there were the standard introductory remarks. Over 900 people are attending the conference, with attendees from many countries. People who helped facilitate the conference were thanked.
Dr. Holmes speech focused on attachment theory, a realm that I don't know a lot about, so it was very informative to me. He spoke about how infants and toddlers seek security, about mentalization as an effort to feel secure in an insecure world, and related it nicely to both experiences of groups, and experiences in the world.
He started off quoting Adrienne Rich's poem, "In Those Years". He provided the context for the poem and read a large section. What particularly jumped out at me was the line, "the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged" which he related to his description of "the self".
The self, he suggested, resides at the intersection of our internal neural networks and our external social networks. I loved this formulation, because I've often thought about our social networks and being metanetworks of all of our neural networks. I've thought that it would be fascinating to explore artificial neural network technology in terms of our social networks. Could I run a back propagation algorithm to refine the rankings of trust on my social networks? It is a tool I've long wanted to explore.
Dr. Holmes presented a lot of material very quickly. It seems as if his talk probably could be expanded into a fascinating semester long course. He spoke about Winnecott and Gergely and the idea of the mother's face as the mirror in which an infant first finds him or herself. He touched on Goal Corrected Empathetic Attunement. It may well be that all of this is old hat for those that are trained in attachment theory. For me, I couldn't keep up with the notes, and simply decided that I should explore this more later.
One phrase that particularly jumped out at me was 'Companionable exploration', and I believe the reference was to Hard and Lake. I have a vague idea about what was being talked about and need to explore this further as well. It caused me to stop and think about the exploration of Second Life that I have done with friends. Is there some way that Second Life can be used in terms of developing or enhancing companionable exploration?
He presented the idea of 'mentalising' as seeing ourselves internally as others see us, and illustrated the point by referring to the great Robert Burns poem about the louse, and what a gift it would be to see ourselves as others see us. I paused to wonder about the relationship between mentalizing and empathy.
In the end, he tied it all back to Rich's dark birds as presenting the traumatic penetration of the self. It provided a great starting point for the panel I attended next.
AGPA - Thursday Early Bird Open Sessions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 07:44This morning, I arrived at the conference at about 7:15 to attend the large group. Like a typical large group, the chairs were arranged in a spiral. Felix de Mendelssohn, who was leading the large group sat at the middle of the spiral. Seated a little further out where Haim Weinberg and Martha Gilmore, who had run the small group in previous years. I saw a friend that I knew from the mailing list and talked about trying to determine what sort of role should I take. Should I be the detached reporter or observer? Should I be an active participant? My friend encouraged me to be an active participant and noted that the role of participant-observer is common in research.
Some people in the group have come to many large groups at AGPA in the past and knew many stories about past leaders of the large groups. Other people were new to AGPA and this was their first large group. For me, it was an interesting combination. I've attened large groups in the Tavistock or Group Relations tradition. I had heard stories of previous large groups through the mailing list, and was friends with a few participants, yet at the same time, it was my first time at AGPA or an AGPA large group.
I left my laptop in its case. There was no wifi and no power outlets. I felt that the laptop might be too obtrusive. So, my comments here are based on my recollections after the fact. I've always enjoyed large groups. From my outsider perspective, especially as I would describe to the uninitiated, the large group is a chance for everyone to sit around share random associations, and learn something from and about the group as a whole. In a session filled with experienced group psychotherapists, it seems like an opportunity for people to make short, witty comments, full of nuance and psychological overtones. Is there competition in the large group to be the wittiest, most profound, or get the most attention? It sure seems so.
This group started off with playful banter around the transition of leaders. Concerns were expressed about whether or not the new leader was selected appropriately. People drew in parallels to the U.S. political situation as we look at replacing your leader through the electoral process, as well as whether of not the votes had been properly counted in the past or would be in the future. We danced around issues of how we mourn the loss of one leader, and our hopes for a new leader.
I explored the issue of hope a little bit, in terms of the group process, our hopes for the leader of the large group and the role of hope in the U.S. elections. In doing so, I spoke about my role as a blogger, or member of the press. I have yet to see another press pass, and people seem very curious about me, as a member of the press.
Given the confidentiality of therapeutic work, my presence provides more grist for the participants, not only myself as I try to navigate the boundary between participant and observer, and respect what should or shouldn't be said from or about the large group, but also for others as they think about their reactions and the possible observation and writing about them. Because of trying to respect some of this, this blog post may seem a bit bland compared to the actual event.
AGPA - Thursday morning
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/21/2008 - 07:13My arrival in Washington was uneventful. I checked in at the AGPA conference and picked up my press credentials. My credentials were the only ones in the folder when I arrived and there was not any sort of press packet. Somehow, I suspect that this isn't a heavily covered event. I soon met two friends from the Group Psychotherapy mailing list and we found a place to sit down and explore Second Life together.
I've always been interested in the group dynamics of online communities, and Second Life is no different. Are these dynamics suitable to doing some sort of e-therapy in Second Life? What about confidentiality issues? Pseudonymity? The different set of visual cues that you receive in Second Life than you would receive from a face to face session. We talked about these as we gathered around my laptop, explored some of Second Life and talked with a resident or two.
As we chatted other folks stopped by, friends of my friends, and people that I had met online. Besides Second Life, we talked about what I hoped to get out of the conference. I admitted that I did not know. I talked about how covering the AGPA annual meeting felt a little bit like covering the Libby trial. I could write like a typical journalist, covering the keynotes the way any keynote is covered. Yet that feels to much like heard journalism to me, so I will write things from my own unique perspective. Some how, that seems especially apropos, especially for a conference like this. We also touched upon what the AGPA might be looking for in the coverage of the event. I'm not sure I have a much better answer on that either, other than to observe that it would seem they would want modalities of group psychotherapy to get more and better coverage in the media.
We talked a little bit about how bloggers, perhaps, have become just another new herd. I joked again about rereading Yalom in preparation for the conference. Afterwards, I went to dinner with one of the attendees and we had a nice chat getting to know each other a little better. Now, it is time to throw myself into the fray, balance out how much of a detached observing journalist I will be and how much I'll be an active participant. It will be interesting. Unfortunately, the hotel's WiFi is not open and free, so while I payed for it last night, I may save most of my writing for when I am back at my friends house. With the heavy schedule and the dinner this evening, that might not be for a while.
