ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the consequences of thinking about the therapy group as complex responsive processes of relating between its members, including the therapist. The ®rst consequence is that as a therapist I am thinking about the group in process terms, rather than in terms of some combination of systems thinking and psychoanalysis. By process I mean the direct interaction between human bodies in which meaning and further interaction emerges, perpetually creating the future as continuity and potential transformation in the living present. This is in contrast to a systemic/ psychoanalytic approach in which process is understood as the interaction between parts of a system in order to create a whole, which is inevitably outside the direct experience of interaction (see Part II). From the complex responsive processes perspective, participation means participating with each other in self-organizing processes of meaning in which our individual and collective identities emerge as continuity and potential transformation. Individual minds are understood as private, silent versions of public, vocal social relations between people. There is nothing above or below this interaction because it is interaction itself that has intrinsic patterning capacities. As interaction is iterated from moment to moment it has the potential for transformation because of its property of amplifying small differences in interaction. Both individual mind and social relating are patterned as narrative themes and change is change in these themes.
