You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
According to the original formulation of primary goals, every social system is working in the service of its survival, which necessarily includes development and ultimately transformation (Agazarian, 1997, pp. 31-32). This text departs from the observation that the classical group relations conference—as a space to explore the experience of what happens when humans group—fails to move from development into transformation. One of the factors causing this inability to continue its success may be a reluctance to critique its formative paradigms: structuralism and psychoanalysis. In the chronicle of group relations methodology, the absence of continental European voices (of the francophone post-structuralist innovators in particular) is counterbalanced by the dominance of a somewhat outdated Anglo-American academic discourse.
The text starts at the birth of structuralism and psychoanalysis, near the end of the nineteenth century in Paris. It shows how these two scientific revolutions were understood and eventually evaluated by French literary critics and philosophers who developed an alternative reading of text and reality, resulting in a different connection between authors and their readership. That shift of paradigm is taken as an inspiration for possible, yet still unexplored, transformations of group relations theory and practice. It leads to a concluding section, which offers suggestions for thinking out-of-the-box about the twenty-first century conference: a number of what-if questions regarding a different design and management. These pertain to the formulation of titles and themes, to the use of primary task, to the source and exercise of authority, to the categorising of participants, and to the task, role, and remuneration of staff.