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Home / Organisational and Social Dynamics, Volume 20, Number 1

Group relations, innovation, and the production of nostalgia

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Author: Sapochnik, Carlos

Source: Organisational and Social Dynamics, Volume 20, Number 1, June 2020, pp. 1-15(15)

Publisher: Karnac Books

This article explores the concept of nostalgia from both phenomenal and interpretative perspectives as experienced within and generated by group relations conferences and other group activities like sport, drama, or music. It posits that nostalgia inevitably emerges in group relations conferences to sustain primitive fantasies and the work of mourning necessary for psychic growth. The article then reflects on the dual purpose of conference titles as setting objectives to the exploration as well as protection from wild thoughts, enactments, and thus the unmitigated brutality of the experience of the unconscious in groups. It calls attention to how the intention to apply conference learning arises from (and contributes to) an overdetermined ambivalent relationship of group relations with psychoanalysis.

Keywords: DEFENCES; GROUP RELATIONS; MOURNING; NOSTALGIA; PSYCHOANALYSIS

Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: 01 June 2020

More about this publication?
  • Organisational and Social Dynamics is a forum for the publication of theoretical and applied papers that are relevant and accessible to an international readership; and, one where writers from psychoanalytic, group relations, and systems perspectives can address emerging issues in organisations and societies throughout the world.

    It aims to sustain a creative tension between scientific rigour and popular appeal, both developing conversations with the professional and social scientific world and opening up these conversations to practitioners and reflective citizens everywhere. We wish to attract manuscripts from contributors who are aware of their own values, suppositions and assumptions, the influence of counter-transference in their work, whatever form it takes, and the ability to connect the internal world of individuals and groups with societal and global processes.
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