ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two conference papers, one by Farhad Dalal and the other by Andrew Samuels, both delivered as keynote speeches at the 2015 international transactional analysis conference hosted in Sydney, Australia, which focused on the power of group dynamics. Dalal spoke about the twin tyrannies of internalism and individualism, defined as the problems that arise when we focus primarily on internal psychological dynamics with an emphasis on the individual at the expense of a broader understanding of social dynamics. Samuels, in turn, spoke about what he saw as the importance of the individual’s role in the group, particularly in the political sphere, as distinct from collective action, in effect offering a more complex view of individuality. In this chapter, the author elaborates these apparently opposing views as interconnected dimensions of our human life in groups, especially in relation to the concept of personal growth or maturation, which is seen to emerge out of the interplay between individual and societal processes.
