Grup d´Analisi Barcelona

Promote change

Escher_triangle

As professionals in the field of health and education our objective is to promote and facilitate change. A first step is to try and define what we understand by individual and social change[i]:

From a sociological point of view (social change) we can underline two important ideas. Firstly, the idea of process, which in turn differentiates two types of change, change as transformation and change as a reproductive process; we incorporate, then, the temporal axis and the nature of change. Secondly, the need of synthesis and the praxis (P. Sztompka, 1993), understanding the first as an impulse destined to overcome opposition (for example, between structure and action), and the second as a combination between individualities and totalities (between agents of change and receptors of change) through feedback and awareness.

 Change on the individual level is relatively easy to activate, in spite of that the organism itself (the somatic as well as the psychological part) has a natural tendency towards a homeostatic equilibrium, this is to say towards a no-change, or towards modifying the internal environment for rapidly assimilating the change. For describing this type of change would be adequate the well-known sentence “to change something for not changing anything” which applies to individuals, institutions as well as society.  Really, our natural tendency is towards a no-change. Changes happen when there is an internal or external disequilibrium which forces us to incorporate new elements and reject elements that are not useful anymore to the organism. In this sense, we are speaking more of development or evolution than of change. Few people change radically their ways of being and of placing themselves in life. For Watzlawick, Weakland and Fisch (1974), change has to do with the way in which human beings pose and resolve problems. Another important question is the difference between first-order change, or change “in”, and second-order change, or change “of”. We already mentioned the first, which has to do with reproductive changes that tend to maintain the system; the second type implies a reformulation of the problem, a transformation of the system. For “transformative” changes to take place a necessary first step is becoming conscious of that a problem exists, something that does not function and should be changed. Although these theories can be applied to persons as well as groups, societies or institutions, it is important to point out that second-order changes, in as much as they modify whole systems, they always have an impact on the social environment of the individual.

 We conceive the notion of change as closely related to three concepts: teaching, investigation and therapy. These are three fields of human activity that share objectives and hypotheses in relation to change and the possibility of change of people on the individual as well as the social level.

 From the groupanalytic point of view, all education is based on investigation and has a therapeutic effect; all investigation implies a teaching/learning effect (enseñaje, conglomerate of enseñanza/aprendizaje, as Juan used to call it), and also a therapeutic one. Also, all therapy involves aspects of investigation and education. All depends on the priority given to one or the other aspect of this tripod. Once again, the groupanalytic method permits to establish a social space where the pedagogic, therapeutic and investigative functions can be articulated, and in this way differentiate in each case the general frame of reference, the objectives and their progressive evaluation.

 English translations are not available of texts marked with an asterisk*

Individual and social change in grupoanalisis

The workshop experience of Aiguablava was one of these unique experiences which every now and then happen in the SEPTG. The organization of the workshop permitted that all the members attending, divided into four groups (yellow, green, red and blue) could participate in four subgroups conducted with different techniques commented afterwards in the large group. There was also a staff group which elaborated and contained the whole of the experience. Afterwards, each group shared in writing their experience and reflections. The full sequence was published in the journal of the SEPTG.

[i] See a revision of these concepts in H. Campos (1998). “A modo de introducción”. Boletín de la SEPTG, Época IV, 13, 13-28.*