CASE CONFERENCE SERIES

November 22, 2024

1:30-3:00PM on zoom

Mark Stein, PhD

CURIOUSITY ABOUT WORK AND THE INFLUENCE OF WILFRED BION:

The Tavistock Work Discussion Group Method

 

Work discussion groups were created by the Tavistock Clinic to train psychotherapists. In recent years these discussion groups have become central to the training of organizational consultants by the Tavistock Clinic.

 

Dr Stein maintains that the particular strength of the Tavistock Clinic’s approach to training psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, and now consultants as well, is in its use of group processes to explore the plurality of experiences through work discussion groups. Central to the exploration of these experiences is the facilitation of curiosity, emotional contact, and thinking about organizations. Bion’s ideas on curiosity, emotional linking, thinking and negative capability are essential if we are to make sense of the main elements of the work discussion seminar. There is little literature on the use of work discussion groups as a training method. In order to fill this gap, Dr. Stein will elucidate how the work discussion group seminar uses Bion’s ideas in furthering the capacity of trainees to work psychoanalytically with organizations.

 

Mark Stein PhD has been involved in consulting, coaching and running leadership development workshops and group relations events for many years, including at the Tavistock Clinic and Institute, London Business School and INSEAD (in France). He is a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Association. Mark is Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Management at the University of Leicester. He has been on the staff of numerous Group Relations conferences including the Leicester Conference, and Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities. For many years he has run Work Discussion Groups as developed by the Tavistock Clinic. In 2025 he is slated to deliver OPUS’s Eric Miller Memorial Lecture. For his papers, Mark has been awarded many prestigious awards including the European Academy of Management’s iLab Prize for innovative scholarship and the Gavin Macfadyen Memorial Essay Prize for Lord of the Flies: A psychoanalytic view of the gang and its processes. Mark is on the core faculty of the Tavistock Clinic's Doctoral Programme in Organizational Consulting.

 

Moderator: Frances Unsell, MDiv, LP, is a trained Psychoanalyst who has worked primarily as an Organizational Consultant for over 35 years, consulting to organizations and their senior leaders. She also designs and leads Organizational Role Conferences and supervises other consultants who wish to deepen and broaden their approach. A graduate of Union Theological Seminary with a concentration in Psychiatry and Religion (psychoanalytic orientation) where she was a Rockefeller Fellow; she received her primary training in groups and organizations through the working and training conferences of Tavistock Institute’s Leicester Conference and a four-year apprenticeship with The Grubb Institute. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Gould Center at IPTAR, a member of ISPSO (International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations) and OPUS (Organization Promoting Understanding of Society).

 

1.5 CE Credits

 

Learning objectives:

1. Participants will become familiar with the Tavistock Work Discussion Group method
2. Participants will learn about the influence of Wilfred Bion on the Tavistock Work Discussion Group method
3. Participants will develop a greater understanding about the roles of curiosity, emotional contact and thought in the Tavistock Work Discussion Group method

 

Key topics:

• The Tavistock Work Discussion Group method
• The influence of Wilfred Bion on the Tavistock Work Discussion Group method
• The roles of curiosity, emotional contact and thought in the Tavistock Work Discussion Group method

 

The Gould Center Steering Committee:

Susan S. Berger, PsyD, FIPA, Director

Michael A. Diamond, PhD, Michael Moskowitz, PhD, FIPA, Frances Unsell M.Div., LP, Matthew Von Unwerth, Ph.D., LP, FIPA