ABSTRACT
The chapter offers a description of the state of the membership and staff team at the beginning of a group relations conference. Groups are rituals of a particular kind, convinced that they are not a ritual but an organization at work. These two cannot be separated, as demonstrated by Bion when discussing the psychotic and neurotic aspects of the mind as coexisting in healthy individuals and groups. Group relations conferences in the Tavistock tradition make use of psychoanalytic and systemic perspectives to bring into focus group dynamics around boundaries, roles, task, and authority, assisting the participants to move from fragmentation to integration, while considering possible applications of the learning to the individual’s organizational life. In spite of commonalities, conferences are always different because they arise out of the participation of their design, their members and staff, organizational setting, and cultural and political context at a given time. The chapter considers how ritual behaviour is in evidence in group relations in the Tavistock model and the functions it may serve, including protecting from a both feared and desired exploration of sexuality. Ritual may be understood as a socially approved practice, a pathological enactment, or even a sinister dimension at the level of a cult. The argument draws from a psychoanalytic understanding of the frame, exploring the nature and need for ritual practices. It considers issues of tradition, leaders as shamanic figures, and the group relations conference as a particular type of performance with the purpose of finding a translation for (and recognition of) socially ambivalent feelings—and thus moves participants towards potential transformation and growth while managing the problematic certitude of the death drive.
