Psyberspace

My recent post: Can we Survive? is a draft for an item in a psychodrama publication. In that post I link Wisdom Councils and – Creative Insight Councils to the Sociometric methods of J.L. Moreno. The main idea is that there is a lager community and the small group resonates with the larger group in isomoprhic harmony, and can thus give back compelling insights and wisdom.

In this post I want to add a related idea.

From Dynamic Facilitation and the Wisdom Council theory I have got it clear that a small group can achieve something in addition to personal therapy for its members, and assist an organisation or community in developing its life, and in its decision making.

Jim Rough calls it “option creating”, I am not yet sure exactly what he means by this but it is not just a list of possibilities or wild ideas from a brainstorming session. The breakthrough in a group happens when there is an insight into a real option – something the whole group would like to see happen.

Such breakthroughs are possible over the longer time frame of a group, of diverse members, meeting for several days and sharing at a deep level. Traditional meetings can’t achieve this depth.

For a group to be of use to a larger community there needs to be a thorough warm-up before the event as to the purpose and context. While in psychodrama we are aware of the importance of the frame, I have not experienced a group in that tradition that has the focus of leading to outcomes for the whole community. In our organisations we tend to make decision in meetings, and while there is plenty of interaction and depth work, it is not specifically an clearly focussed on future actions. There may be specialist sub-committees, or work groups, but they tend to be by the people with special positions an ongoing positions within the organisation.

Imagine randomly selected diverse small group – from an organisation or community – doing depth work groups with the task of one or two of the following topics:

What is our strategic plan?
What is our vision?
Principles for the Constitution.
Who should be a member?

The group would present its findings to all members of the community or larger organisation and its governing in one a4 document, and 20 minute audio file at a special hui for the occasion.

Peggy Holman Founder of Open Space

via Self-Portrait – Peggy Holman.

What is an underlying question that gives form to your work or interest in this field?

“How do we seed, grow, and evolve enlightened communities and inspired organizations?”

Some links and snippets on the science of consciousness.

Useful item. I think there is an art and a science to checklists. Their design and their implementation.

The beauty of checklists | The Evolving Newsroom – http://evolvingnewsroom.co.nz/the-beauty-of-checklists

Whole article follows:

Democracy Now! 1 March 2010

There are several stories in this hour long program, one about earthquakes, one about race in a Californian university, and one about depression. The last one tells me what I know as a psychotherapy to be true. Not that antidepressants don’t always work, but that why they work is a big muddle, it could be the placebo effect or just time. And the price for this dubious result is to pathologise millions of people, to get them thinking about the psyche in a medical & unhelpful way.

All for huge profit.

The DSM 5 is a scandal and will make the problem worse!

All part of a 150 year trend… that bit was new to me.

Video of the Depression story on Democracy Now

Every health professional should watch this video, listen to this last story in this episode of Democracy Now, or read the book by Gary Greenberg, Amazon:

Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease

Manufacturing Depression?:

The primary point that Greenberg expressed in the interview is that we are taking a normal human experience and turning it into a disease. He makes it clear that he has no problem with relieving the suffering of depression with drugs, but he questions whether we have turned normal blue moods into a disease in order to justify medicating away sadness.

A satisfying read online is where Greenberg is interviewed on the Well. Quote follows.

I am using Facebook a bit more lately.  I still use Twitter more.  But very differently.  This post for example I might link to Twitter, I found the link on Twitter.  It relates to my “Exploring the Psyche in Cyberspace” – psyberspace project.  And people who don’t like this stuff may well drop off, others who like it will stay on.  But Facebook is different.  Family, friends and local people hang out there.  I don’t want to foist my arcane musings onto them.   I might send a snippet, and a snippet of art.  My photos update from Flickr to Facebook.

Book: The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud, and the Search for Hidden Universes by Richard Panek

I leafed through this book today. I like the theme, but I think the analogy of a story with two protagonists is taken a bit far. Still, looks like it could be fun. Might get it yet!

Some reviews follow.

Plan Of The Temple Complex At Mnajdra.

Article by Bernadette Flynn who is doing research on this site, but more specifically research into knowing. The reconstruction of ancient ruins is the basis to explore an approach to knowing through the body. Embodiment. All this reminds me of the ways of know I’ve been researching. Theatre, dance, phronesis.

Flynn-final – Powered by Google Docs:

The principle purpose of this paper is to investigate how simulation spaces in cultural heritage can incorporate somatic knowledge i. An understanding of the past that starts with the somatics of the sensing, feeling mobile body is a radical departure from traditional approaches to digital cultural heritage where the corporeal dimension has been absent. To date simulations of cultural heritage have largely focused on processual archaeological accounts of the past to inform design practice. This has resulted in an emphasis on mathematically accurate representations of the past. While these accurate representations simulate material culture to a high degree of technical sophistication they fail to take account of the sensing body and thereby de-emphasise significance aspects of end user engagement.

This paper seeks to address this imbalance by investigating the application of somatic knowledge to the creation of an interpretative digital cultural heritage space. Using the framework of interpretative archaeology consideration is given to phenomenologicaly informed accounts of prehistory that focus on embodied experience of the built environment. This paper identifies approaches in the work of pheneomenological archaeology that can usefuly interpret the spatiotemporal characteristics of an archaeological site in relation
to living moving bodies. Broader discussions of embodiment are framed from the perspective of the cultural heritage visitor as end user. The paper considers users subjectivity as in dialogue with the spatial aesthetics of the landscape morphology, and outlines how interaction design can be mobilized to explore an embodied encounter with architectural remains

Amazon.com: Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge): David Turnbull: Books

Science and technology have created many of the problems besetting us at the turn of the century, yet, paradoxically, we cannot address them without their assistance. This beautifully illustrated book takes a fresh approach to resolving the problems of progress and modernity by reframing science and technology. In an eclectic and highly original study, Turnbull brings together a wide range of traditions as diverse as cathedral building, Micronesian navigation, cartography and turbulence research. He argues that all our differing ways of producing knowledge, including science, are messy, spatial and local. Every culture has its own ways of assembling local knowledge, thereby creating space through the linking of people, practices and places. The spaces we inhabit and assemblages we work with are not as homogeneous and coherent as our modernist perspectives have led us to believe-rather they are complex and heterogeneous motleys.

This is the fourth post while doing a close reading of Moreno’s lecture on Tele, “given by the author during his European journey, May- June, 1954.”

First Post – Intro
Second Post – Transference
Third Post – Tele
Transference and Tele (tag) This will produce a list of all of the posts in this series.

Quotes from the lecture, some book & Google research and my detailed comments follow.