This book examines the Tavistock tradition of using group relations conferences as temporary training organizations for groups and institutions, and how those can inform and enrich the theory and practice of experiential learning more generally. First, this book analyses the structures, rituals, and beliefs of group relations conferences, drawing on the author’s learned experience in the field, followed by meditations extending to broader areas, such as the social nature of corruption, martial arts, Western culture’s longing for creativity, and the use of drawing in social science research. It addresses the tension between psychoanalysis and systemic theory in group relations thinking, refining and re-defining key concepts of the practice, challenging notions of dependence and dependency, performative poetics, learning, the politics of power, nostalgia, and the unspoken reasons for the wish to join conference staff teams. It offers a critique of the polarity concerning terms such as spontaneity, the sense of mystery, openness to the unexpected, and trust in unconscious processes, as opposed to the desire for certainty and the confusion, anxiety, and aggression evoked when groups find themselves without familiar signposts. Drawing on his thinking developed over the course of a professional life as organizational consultant, artist, designer, teacher, researcher, and poet, the author invites the reader to challenge boundaries towards a less inflexible and defended engagement with the Other. The metaphor of bricolage, an activity that inspires creativity and originality, suggests possible ways of putting known things together to approach new meaning as provisional and shifting. The many strands thus gathered reveal new dimensions of group life that crucially affect our everyday living and surviving, both as individuals and as members of society. This work will allow psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, group therapists, organizational consultants and trainers to put the lessons learned from group relations conferences into everyday practice.

Exploring the work of a Psych-Oncology Team in an inpatient and outpatient setting, this powerful, interesting, and engaging book is about teenagers and young adults diagnosed with cancer. As part of the few multidisciplinary teams of this type in the United Kingdom, the authors offer helpful insights into supporting young people and their families as they navigate this complex and devastating disease, writing on key areas such as trauma, the effects of early childhood cancer in adolescence and beyond, the social and cultural effects of cancer treatment, hope, and hopelessness, and questions of mortality. Each chapter contains a mixture of clinical reflections and patient vignettes, along with clear guidance about how to support patients and their families both during and after treatment, and at the point of death too. With a compassionate approach to understanding the challenges for patients, their families, and clinicians alike, this is a book for nurses, doctors, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists, for parents and carers, and for young people who find themselves in this position and who can easily feel as though they are alone with their overwhelming feelings.

By bringing together perspectives from psychoanalysis and literary studies and considering the reciprocal relation between ideas about mourning and our internal worlds, this book provides a guide to thinking theoretically about loss and how we deal with it. Rael Meyerowitz conceptualizes the work of psychic internalization required by loss in terms of bodily digestion and metabolization. In this way, successful mourning can be likened to the proper processing of physical sustenance, while failed mourning is akin to indigestion, as expressed in various forms of melancholia, mania, depression, and anxiety. Borrowing from the methodology of literary criticism, the book conducts a detailed treatment of these themes by drawing on a series of psychoanalytic works, including those of Freud, Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, Klein, Loewald, Torok, Nicolas Abraham, and Green, while paying close critical attention to a selection of literary works such as those by William Faulkner, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath. Aimed at clinicians as well as readers with a more academic interest in psychoanalytic theory and language, the close-reading format offered by this book will also enable students in psychoanalytic and psychotherapy courses to engage deeply with some central texts and key concepts in psychoanalysis.

Grounded in psychological research but with a very practical focus on organizational behaviour issues, this book explains the basic psychological concepts of group dynamics with a focus on their application with teams in the workplace. The book begins with an overview of how teams are being used in the workplace and the factors that relate to team success. It goes on to examine basic topics such as goals, norms, cooperation, and communication while reviewing the main challenges teams face, including conflict, decision making, problem solving, creativity, and valuing diversity. The final section analyzes the use of teams in the workplace, including the impact of organizational culture, technological support for teams, differences among types of work teams, team building, and team evaluation and reward.

Living through the Covid-19 global pandemic has changed the way that we experience our lives, the way that we relate to one-another, and the way that we engage with the world. Focusing contextually on the initial lockdowns of the pandemic in 2020, this book proposes that art-based research has a central, illuminative role to play in our understanding of unfolding crises. The changes brought on by the global event may not be readily accessible or expressible through traditional academic research. Art-based research offers the opportunity to explore, document, and reflect on the emerging and often ineffable qualities of transformed lives by drawing on emotional, bodily, and interactive aspects of experience. Such an approach allows for meaning-making that makes room for reflexive, interpersonal, and dialogical engagement. The contributions aim to capture and explore lived experiences of the pandemic, as well as begin a discussion about how meaning-making is changing through and beyond the pandemic. This book further explores how the nature and practice of art-based research in itself has been challenged and transformed. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art education, art psychotherapy, consumer research, visual studies, cultural studies, and sociology.

"We do not hear the sun rise. So too, the greatest moments in a man's life come quietly." With this beautiful quotation, the author begins his introduction to meditation. He draws from an esoteric tradition where meditation is called occult meditation, because it aims at uncovering the hidden laws of nature and showing the way to unification with our own inner source, the soul, through contemplation and illumination. Niels Brønsted (1938-2020) combines theory and practical use in a clear and thought-through way. By means of practical exercises he leads his reader safely through the phases and technique of occult meditation. This makes Meditation - The Royal Road to the Soul a much needed handbook for the person who wants to make meditation a significant part of his or her life.

A guidebook on how to embody compassionate awareness in all of our relationships —with self, one another, our planet, in an age of global uncertainty. We all struggle at times with how to bring meditation off the cushion and into the beautiful, dynamic, and messy realm of relationship. At a time when humanity seems to have forgotten our inherent interrelatedness, this book offers an inspiring set of principles and practices for deepening intimacy and remembering the interconnection that is our birthright. Eden Tull interweaves heartfelt personal stories, sharing her journey from seven years as a monastic in a silent Zen Monastery to living and teaching in the megatropolis of Los Angeles and beyond, with teachings and mindful inquiry to help the reader connect personally with the principles of Relational Mindfulness. In a voice that is transparent, vulnerable, and brave, Tull shares possibilities for integrating mindfulness In gentle yet powerful tone, she covers topics ranging from balance and personal sustainability to sexuality to conscious consumerism. Relational Mindfulness is based on the simple understanding that the most subtle form of love is attention. While a revolution usually means to evolve and change, this shift is actually a return to a simple and sacred understanding we seem to have forgotten—one we can only remember when we are present.