ABSTRACT
The conferences I have been trying to describe represent one application of an understanding of human relationships that has developed in the Tavistock Clinic and Institute and elsewhere over many years. The group of psychiatrists and psychologists who formed the original staff of the Institute had been brought together in the British Army during the Second World War. Many psychiatrists and psychologists in the army found themselves dealing more with social than with individual problems, and of necessity recruited other social scientists to extend their understanding of institutions and their organizations. They became concerned with the health of groups, both small and large, as well as with that of individuals. They found themselves increasingly focusing attention on the relationships within and between groups, that were the accompaniment, if not the cause, of individual breakdown.
