ABSTRACT
Toward the end of 1980s, the institute arrived at an internal crisis. The old structure, in which the council of fellows of the institute held the whole decision power, started to crumble. The younger generation did not want to do the administrative work without having a say and they wanted to change the way the institute was run. This led to a democratization of the institute and this chapter describes the history and theoretical underpinnings of this process. With respect to the latter, the new focus on group therapy, with its accompanied interest in group dynamics and field exploration is discussed. Since the 1990s was a year where the whole world experienced a wave of democratization, this chapter concludes with a tentative hypothesis that the New York Institute reacted to this phenomenon of the larger field.
