An important part of the AGPA conference for me personally was the Large Group open sessions. I've participated in large groups at Group Relations conferences in the past and I've always valued the experiences. This large group experience was different, which brought its own value to me.

I first became interested in large groups, group relations and the whole realm of group dynamics and processes when I was working at a large European bank. I needed to find my way around a complicated matrix-managed multicultural environment. I hired a management consultant to help me chart and navigate the waters. It was through this that I stumbled across Group Relations and Wilfred Bion.

Bion was a psychoanalyst in Britain during World War II. He had a job trying to help shell-shocked soldiers recover so they could be sent back to the front lines as quickly as possible. To do this, he met with soldiers in large groups and looked at the anxieties of the large group as a whole as they were acted out through group dynamics he referred to as basic assumptions.

Group Relations conferences typically have large group sessions based on Bion's work. In the large group, everyone sits in chairs arranged in a spiral. One of the first decisions a participant must make is how close to the center of the spiral do they want to be. With everyone seated, the participants start talking about whatever comes to mind, ideally much of it coming as free associations to things that have already been said by other participants. From this, important concerns from the unconscious can be discovered and addressed.

This can be frightening and disorienting. Leaders or consultants help provide a framework within which to work. This can provide a goal or primary task which can help the group from feeling lost or wandering aimlessly. It can provide boundaries that make the group safe enough for people to become vulnerable and to explore thoughts, feelings and fantasies from the frightening realm of the unconscious.

Large groups are a great place to explore individuals attitudes about authority, as well as attitudes of the group as a whole, both in the moment in the room, as well as how it relates to larger socio-political processes, and this was reflected in the description of the group.

The group gathered three times during the conference, the first as an early morning session on Thursday, the second was at lunchtime on Friday, and the final session was at the end of Saturday. Years ago, I went to a Group Relations conference in Holland. In the first session, people express discomfort at the arrangement of the chairs and in a stunning challenge to the leadership of the large group, many people moved their chairs in an attempt transform the spiral into a large circle. I stayed in my place, joining with the leadership of the group, as people around me moved away. It provided wonderful material for people to use as they explored their relationship to authority.

In the AGPA large groups, people complained about the seating arrangement, which seemed more like poorly arranged semicircles than like a spiral. They would try to find place to sit where they could see better, but there wasn't any substantial shifting of chairs. The complaints about the timing of the group, sounded similar to me as complaints about the arrangement of chairs, but this wasn’t explored.

People spent a bit of time talking about their feelings about the new leader of the group and the leaders of the group from last year, who attended the large group. There was some competition as people fought for their own leadership positions, yet it felt as if some of the large issues authority were not sufficiently explored. People spent a lot of time complaining about the process by which the AGPA leadership selected the large group leader. There was uncertainty about how this was done and with that, anger at the AGPA leadership. Yet it seemed to me as if this anger was never explored in terms of the goal of the Large Group.

It seemed as if the "transference reactions, regressions and defensive mechanisms arising from the 'foundation matrix'" were not explored and I wonder how many participants came away better able to "question his/her own and the whole group's attitudes towards authority and leadership". I don’t want to be too critical of the Large Group. In every Large Group it seems as if more material is dredged up than can be explored, but I was surprised that these issues of leadership and authority were not explored in the same way as I would imagine they would have been explored in a Group Relations Large Group.

My own experience was very interesting as well. I was there as a newcomer. I've never been to an AGPA function before, and certainly not an AGPA large group. I am not even a member of the AGPA. It seemed as if many viewed me as an interloper, a boundary crosser, a threat. Some of this may come from people's reaction to the media. Is the media a valuable part of the foundation matrix? Is it a tool that can be used to spread important information supporting ones agenda? Will it turn a critical eye and point out inadequacies? Will it even get the story right?

I suspect that some of the reaction to me was about people's reaction to the media. I suspect some of the reaction to me was about people's concern about whether or not their own inadequacies will be revealed. I suspect some of the reaction to me was about their relationship to the authority structure of AGPA. How could AGPA's leadership allow the press in on an open session?

Some of it may also have to do with the issues between the old media of newspapers, television, and radio, and the new media of blogs. The old media tries to be objective and detached reporters, hiding their biases. The new media, bloggers, often embrace subjectivity. I felt that I could not adequately report about an experiential meeting without joining in the experience myself. I needed to be a participant-observer. There were other people in observer roles in the large group that spoke with me afterwards but their observer status was not discussed during the sessions.

My experience with the large group also seemed to touch on other issues of the AGPA itself. How does the AGPA related to people outside of their little guild? Do they want to reach out and bring in new people? Do they want to take the power of group psychotherapy out into the community where it could do incredible good? Or, are they more concerned about their own safety; unable to take important risks?

Here, I expect I am clearly showing my bias. I think the psychoanalytic large group experience is extremely powerful. I wish many more people, especially those I interact with in the realms of politics and technology could have psychoanalytic large group experiences, yet too many don't even know about the possibility, let alone have the chance to overcome their own resistances to participating in such an experience.

Another interloper to the group was a social worker that helps homeless people in a predominantly black section of Washington, DC. She very powerfully owned her role as an outsider, as an interloper and challenged members of the group to step out of their comfort zones and experience being an outsider. As I think back on it, I wonder about the possibilities of a psychoanalytic large group for the community she serves. Are there large group leaders strong enough to provide a safe framework for such a group?

As I sit on the train and watch the landscape roll slowly by, I allow myself to enter a fantasy. What would it be like to have a large group that was composed partly of black homeless men with a history of substance abuse or other mental health issues and partly of participants at an AGPA conference? My mind wanders to other discussions I had at the conference. What if we bring in soldiers returning from Iraq who have been struggling with the VA to get their mental health issues addressed, especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? As the landscape outside my window continues to shift the fantasy grows. What if we include a bunch of political figures as well, such as legislators and their staff?

It would be dangerous. Would it be effective? Would the leaders be able to hold the boundaries and keep everyone safe? Would people be able to let go of their need to speak, to be the healers or leaders, and become able to listen? I don't know, but I would love to see someone try and tackle it.

Back to focusing on the large group: I believe it would have been powerful to help people explore their views about the press, about bloggers, how all of this relates to authority and safety. I believe it would have been powerful for the group to explore their concerns about the boundary. How much of the concern is about confidentiality and keeping the participants safe, and how much was displaced concerns about the leadership structure, and how much was simply fear about trying something new? As I write this, I wonder about people's reaction to my fantasy. As you read it, think about your reaction, think about what it can tell you about your relationship to passion, power and politics.

At one point, when we were talking about these interlopers and worst of all, the press, one woman, who by virtue of her advanced age, long list of notable publications, and very strong voice was acting as an unofficial de facto leader commented about my attendance. She said something to the effect that while she was perhaps at best ambivalent about the press attending, when she found out that I was a blogger and I would simply post my reactions on the internet willy nilly, without any accountability to some power structure, she had many strong reactions, almost all of them were negative. I was in no position to ask her about "transference reactions, regressions and defensive mechanisms", but I would have been very interested if someone had. Perhaps some of that is my own defensive mechanism. Perhaps some of that is my own competition with her, as if I could compete with such a formidable figure. Perhaps this fed into our interaction at the end of the large group.

After the group ended, there was a brief didactic session where we all tried to learn from the experience. There were references made to Bion as well as to Foulkes. Foulkes was another psychoanalyst that ended up taking Bion's position at the military hospital in Britain during World War II. From his work another tradition emerged, Group Analytics. While the description of the Large Group session at AGPA referenced Bion's seminal work, Experiences in Groups, Felix de Mendelssohn, as I understand it, is from the Group Analytics tradition. I asked him about the differences between the Group Relations framework and the Group Analytics framework and why he chose to work within the Group Analytics framework.

The elderly woman looked back at me with what appeared to be anger in her eyes and scorn in her voice and said "One's from Bion and one's from Foulkes" as if that should be sufficient explanation. It may we be that she has read all of both Bion and Foulkes and even had many opportunities to sit down and talk with each of them. I've read some Bion and some Foulkes. Not enough to clearly differentiate between their methodologies, but perhaps more than some other participants in the session. If I had been inclined to blurt out a response, I would have pointed this out to her as well as the fact that it didn't really explain Felix's choices.

Yet we were running out of time, and we were in the didactic portion of the group so instead I waited for Felix who responded quickly with some very helpful comments. He spoke about the importance of the matrices in the Group Analytic tradition, the foundation matrix, the relational matrix, and alluded to matrices of subgroups, perhaps in appeasement to the older woman who has written much about subgroups. He spoke about the Group Relations tradition focusing more on the leaders and issues of authority. It was all very interesting to me, especially because it didn't fit as closely with the large group experience as I would have liked.

When I've been in Group Relations large groups, there have been consultants to the large groups that typically sit near the outside of the spiral. Much of the focus has ended up being on the group itself, the relational matrix of unconscious processes within the large group and how it relates to the foundation matrix, especially the current socio-political processes going on outside the group. Participants tended to reach down and touch deep emotions with were brought into the group and examined.

In this group, Felix sat in the middle. He was much more of a focus of attention than I recall consultants in Group Relations Large Groups being. It felt like many participants did not reach down and touch deep feelings. It felt like there was a lack of free association. Perhaps some of it was because of interlopers like me and members not feeling safe. Perhaps some of it was because there were many bright therapists busy competing for recognition within the AGPA and defending themselves against blurting out in the here and now. Perhaps some of it was because people failed to stay on task and wanted to use the session as a community forum instead of as a psychoanalytic large group.

I have come away from this with a deeper appreciation of the Large Group. I have come away new insights into myself, into the nature of blogging and its relationship to passion, power and politics. I worked hard in the Large Group to gain these insights and I will work hard over the coming days to more fully understand and integrate them. I hope that through this work, I will be better able to help the AGPA communicate the importance of Group Psychotherapy in addressing problems that our country and our world faces. Yet I also feel sad in that it seems that too many people attended the Large Group, kept their defenses up, stayed away from the primary task and missed a great opportunity to learn more about themselves and their relationship to authority.