ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Group Relations conferences may help or challenge people to relate to something that is really new. Ritualization allows us to stop thinking and to create an illusory sense of similarity in experience and perception, excused from reality testing or even interpretation. By providing a set of repeatable behaviours, it allows people to get lost in the minutiae of getting the ritual form or understanding 'right' instead of searching for a plurality of meaning. The chapter explores whether the concept of isomorphism supports using the family as a proper model for Group Relations. The issue is nothing less than in what sense a Group Relations conference is a good regulator for learning really new things about conscious and unconscious forces and meanings underlying social systems. The chapter explains the risk of propagating a basic assumption mentality of ritualization in and through conferences, when one does not critique the practice of familiarizing associated with psychoanalytic inheritance.
