I approach the Large Group in a manner very similar to how I approach the Internet. Let me explain what I mean by this, why I am saying it and why I think it is important.

I should start by explaining what I mean by the “Large Group”. I’m not talking about a crowd at the mall, at a rally, or even at a party. I am referring specifically to a Large Group as understood in the traditions of Group Relations or Group Analysis, particularly as talked about by group psychotherapists.

You see, I’m on a mailing list of group psychotherapists. It seems like most of the group psychotherapists focus on small groups, say between six and twelve people that meet on a regular basis for therapy. Yet other sizes of groups, median groups and large groups are also sometimes used. I’m not sure what size a group must be to be a median group or a large group, nor have I really managed to understand the difference between the Group Relations tradition, growing out of the work of Wilfred Bion or the Group Analytics tradtion growing out of the work of S.H. Foulkes, yet I don’t believe this especially matters for this blog post.

My first experience with the Large Group was at a Group Relations conference in the late nineties in Massachusetts. I had been working at a large European financial institution and was challenged by the matrix-managed politics around the technology for the firm. I often flew to Europe to negotiate IT strategies and then would come back to the United States and try to get the negotiated strategies implemented.