Socio-analysis
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Socio-analysis is the activity of exploration, consultancy, and
Socio-analysis offers a conception of individuals, groups, organisations, and global systems that takes into account conscious and unconscious aspects and potentialities. From this conception are born methods of exploration which can increase capacities through making conscious what was unconscious for individuals, groups, and organisations, and through releasing energy and ideas that help create individual and organizational direction, and meaning.
Socio-analysis has at its heart a query as to what is the psychological truth for an individual, group, organisation, or other social system, and how may this best be brought to light as a means for creative transformation and growth?
Socio-analysis and wonder
Anxiety, its exploration, and understanding are of central concern to psychoanalysis, which was founded to explore the mental problems of medical patients. While socio-analytic exploration frequently uncovers systemic pain, (of which anxiety is a part), the "pain" is a guide to transformation of the system as a whole with all its potentialities for growth. Joshua Bain has suggested that the emphasis on anxiety is limiting, and that a more appropriate paradigm for socio-analysis is wonder.[2] Wonder was regarded by Plato as the beginning of philosophy, and its link to exploration, creativity, and the growth of capacities of human beings, would seem to make it the appropriate starting point for socio-analysis as well.[3]
"Wonder is the special affection of a philosopher; for philosophy has no other starting point than this; and it is a happy genealogy which makes Iris the daughter of Thaumas". Theaetetus, 155D
The saying "When wonder ceases, knowledge begins", which is attributed to
Brief history
Socio-analysis has its roots in the first Northfield Experiment carried out by
Wilfred Bion
Northfield experiments
- Attention to, and making hypotheses, and interpretations, about conscious and unconscious functioning at the level of the group. A group was no longer regarded as simply an aggregate of individuals, but as having its own intrinsic dynamics that required understanding and interpretation.
- The concept of working therapeutically with the "institution as a whole", or the "whole community". The idea of the "Menninger Clinic in Kansas, and the Cassel Hospital in London has its origins in Main's work at Northfield.[8]
- The significance of creating "transitional space" for therapy, action projects, and development, so that people, (in this case patients), are enabled to take up their own authority for task. Bridger pioneered this approach at Northfield through his celebrated "Club", a space for patients to make of it what they wished to, without the use of the space being determined by hospital or military staff. Bridger continued to develop this approach to working with groups and organisations of all kinds after the War.
Socio-analytic role
The Northfield Experiments heralded a socio-analytic consultant role: one of exploration of individual, group, and organisational phenomena which are linked dynamically. The socio-analyst, as exemplified by the role Bion took at Northfield, and after the War in his group explorations at the
The socio-analyst, like the psychoanalyst, uses concepts such as the unconscious, defences, splitting, projection, projective identification, introjection, and transference, but the field for exploration, while including the individual, is wider than the psychoanalytic dyad – e.g. a group, an organisation, a society, global systems.
Thus, for example, the socio-analyst uses concepts of group and organisational transference, and pays particular attention to the way he/she is made to feel through client engagements, as a possible indication of unconscious dynamics within the client system.
Group relations theory and Tavistock conferences
Bion's exploration of
These insights of Bion together with theories of
The "Leicester" Conference as it came to be known under the leadership of A.K. Rice and colleagues such as Pierre Turquet, Eric Miller,[12] Robert Gosling, and Bruce Reed stimulated similar explorations and enterprises in numerous countries: United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, France, Éire, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Bulgaria, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Israel, India, and Australia.
Other influences
Other influences on the nascent discipline of socio-analysis that emerged from the work of social scientists at the
Recent innovations
Social dreaming
A recent methodology for the exploration of social phenomena has been the discovery of social dreaming by Gordon Lawrence at the Tavistock Institute in 1982.[19] Social dreaming is the activity of sharing dreams (night dreams), associations to the dreams, and connections between dreams, with others in a Matrix setting. The focus of social dreaming (unlike in psychoanalysis or dreaming groups) is not on the meaning of the dream for the individual dreamer, but regarding the dreams and associations as a way of exploring and making social meaning. Conferences to explore social dreaming have been held in Israel, the United States, Australia, India, and most European countries.
Up until 1996 the work that has been described in this article went under different labels.[20] There was no one word that described the activities and the role. Alastair Bain suggested that the discipline should be called "Socio-Analysis" in 1996.
Organisation dynamics
The Australian Institute of Socio-Analysis pioneered a three-year professional training program in socio-analysis in 1999, and began publishing a journal Socioanalysis in 1999. While the Australian Institute of Socio-Analysis no longer exists, the work of socio-analysis continues to be developed by the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA). Other organisations which do socio-analytic or closely related work include the
Organisational dreaming
Current developments in socio-analysis include Bain's discovery of organisational dreaming,[21] which is based on the observation that dreams are "container sensitive", and that the dreams shared by people within an organisation during a project will reflect organisational realities that are the "unexpressed known" within the organisation.[22]
Authority, wonder and the sangha
The work of the Centre for Socio-Analysis has also led to a formulation of "
See also
- Socio-technical systems
- Sociotechnical systems theory
- Nazareth-Conferences
References
- ^ Bain A., "On Socio-Analysis" Socio-Analysis, Vol.1 No.1 June 1999
- ^ Bain J., "From Anxiety to Wonder: A New Paradigm for Socio-Analysis" in Centre for Socio-Analysis Newsletter No.1, February 2006.
- ^ a b Bain A., "Sources of Authority: The Double Threads of Anxiety and Wonder" in Dare to Think the Unthought Known?, Ed. Ajeet N. Mathur, Aivoainut Oy, Tampere, Finland. March 2006.
- ^ Bion, W.R., and Rickman, J., "Intra-group Tensions in Therapy", Lancet, 27 November 1943
- ^ Bion, W.R., "The Leaderless Group Project", Bull. Meninger Clinic, 10, 3: 77-81.1946
- ^ Harrison, T. Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and the Northfield Experiments. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2000
- ^ Kraemer, S. "‘The dangers of this atmosphere’: a Quaker connection in the Tavistock Clinic’s development" History of the Human Sciences 2011; 24(2): 82–102
- ^ Main, T."The Concept of the Therapeutic Community: Variations and Vicissitudes", Group Analysis, 10, Suppl.1977
- ^ Bion, W.R. Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, London, Tavistock, 1961
- ^ Two other basic assumptions have contributed to understanding group behaviour: basic assumption "Oneness" discovered by Pierre Turquet in 1974. Turquet P, "Leadership: The individual and the group" in Gibbard G. et al. eds. The Large Group: Therapy and Dynamics. San Francisco and London. Jossey Bass, 1974. And basic assumption Me discovered by Gordon Lawrence and Alastair Bain in 1992. Lawrence W., Bain A., & Gould L., "The Fifth Basic Assumption." Free Associations, London, Vol. 6, Part 1 (no. 37), 1996
- ^ Trist, E., and Sofer, C., Exploration in Group Relations, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1959
- ISBN 978-3-89806-751-5.
- ^ Jaques, E., The Changing Culture of a Factory, London, Tavistock, 1951
- ^ Trist, E., and Bamforth, W., "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", Human Relations, 4.1951
- ^ Emery F. and Trist E., "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments", Human Relations, 18. 1965
- ^ Miller, E., and Rice, K., Systems of Organisation, London, Tavistock, 1967
- ^ Jaques, E. "Social Systems as a Defence against Persecutory and Depressive Anxiety" in Klein, M. et. a1. (eds.), New Directions in Psycho-analysis, London, Tavistock, 1955
- ^ Menzies, 1. The Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety, London, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations,1970
- ^ Lawrence W. "Ventures in Social Dreaming: The First Experience" in Changes, Vol. 7, No.3, July 1989 Lawrence W. ed. Social Dreaming @ Work, London, Karnac, 1998. Lawrence W. ed. Experiences in Social Dreaming, London, Karnac, 2003
- ^ e.g. Psycho-analytic Social Systems Thinking, Working in the Bion I Tavistock Tradition, Psychodynamic approaches to consultancy, System Psychodynamics.
- ^ Bain A.,"Organisational Dreaming", in PACAWA Newsletter, February, 2006. Bain A. "The Organisation Containing and Being Contained by Dreams: The Organisation as a Container for Dreams (1)" in Infinite Possibilities of Social Dreaming in Systems, ed. Lawrence W., Karnac, London,2007.
- ^ Organisational Dreaming is a part of the generic Social Dreaming
External links
- Grubb Institute in UK.
- Group Relations Australia
- International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations
- IPTAR
- National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA)
- OPUS, UK.
- Social Dreaming Institute
- Tavistock Clinic
- Tavistock Institute
- University of Wuppertal
- PRO consult the Netherlands
- The A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems (AKRI) in USA