ABSTRACT

The relevance of group analysis, with its perspectives founded on psychoanalytic, sociological, and systems/complexity theories has been well demonstrated in its application to many types of work groups small, medium, and large. One of the founding fathers of group analysis, S. H. Foulkes, insisted from the start that it had applications in all contexts. Group work as a vehicle for organizational change has a long history. Cary Cooper, Professor Sir Cary Cooper, was writing about developing social skills in managers via group training. The group analytic concept of the integration of the individual and the group as interdependent realities lies at the heart of the idea of the promotion of the skills of conversation in the workplace. One aim of a creative conversation is to divert mental energies from the task of surviving dysfunctional organizational stresses into new possibilities of co-operative relationship. This is what group analysts would call ego training in action.