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The book Finding a Place to Stand describes the journey of an experienced psychoanalyst who learns actively from his work—with adolescents and their families at McLean Hospital—through his immersion in understanding regressive processes in groups and organizations as well as
through his post as medical director/CEO of the Austen Riggs Center for twenty years (1991-2011). Shapiro proceeds to detail these progressive learning experiences, including even the aspects of each that have been humbling:
In the relatively unstructured atmosphere of an experiential conference on leadership and authority, I found myself unwittingly constructing a group with same dynamics as the one I was developing at McLean.…My perfectionism in the leadership role had stifled the group’s creativity and my narcissism had obscured the contributions of outside groups. [p. xxii]
Shapiro’s learning continued, however, and this volume focuses specifically on his ongoing observations about how groups and organizations may become self-reflective, assisting their staff and members to develop into active group members, leaders and citizens. Informed by the theories and practice of the American Tavistock group, Shapiro contends first that becoming a member of any group involves a joining process. In one’s first experience of membership, that is, within one’s family, this joining will involve multiple dynamics that will likely affect an individual’s subsequent experiences in groups. As an individual develops, he or she will engage in peer relationships: Shapiro describes the sense of “inclusion and exclusion” (p. 3) that may accompany these, further shaping one’s sense of self and of belonging. Eventually, individuals will connect with and/or participate in still other groups. Shapiro contends that fully joining any group requires the capacity first to consider how others are right—that is, to reflect on which aspects of the other members’ ideas fit one’s own experience and which make sense. He offers