Some Thoughts on Group Process at IPA Conventions

Enthusiasts who argue for group process analysis as a regular part of the IPA conventions do seem to have a point. Mandating group process analysts at every IPA convention, with a formal group meeting at the end of every day’s work, was established as a requirement at the very first IPA Convention, and was written into the IPA Constitution. It seemed to many of us a good idea at the time.

Theoretically, the notion makes very good sense—theoretically. The practice should ideally help members understand the unconscious motives and impulses, fantasies and fears, envy, angers, and insults at work in group members (they are, of course, at work in all groups), allowing time to express those feelings, and even provide an opportunity to interpret them based on the symbolic behaviors and preoccupations of group members. This is, after all, what we do, sometimes successfully, as psycho-

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logical historians for historical groups, as well as for public political processes outside the IPA. The notion of the macrocosm in the microcosm is familiar in the social sciences, and even if it was not, experiencing group process analysis is at least a way of being reminded again of how all groups carry hidden emotional material, sometimes acting it out in self-defeating ways.

As a founding member of the IPA, and its first Convention Chair, I well remember the enthusiasm for our first group process, so ably handled by our first group process analysts, John Hartman and Alice Eichholz. Since then, I’ve seen many outstanding scholars—competent, caring, hardworking people—have a go at it. It’s been a testament to their courage and commitment, since what I’ve seen at virtually every IPA convention—I’ve been to 26 of the last 27 annual meetings—is not the intended outcome, but its exact opposite, no matter how hard those group process analysts worked to do the right thing.

Instead of the group pretty much staying together year after year, and going on with good work because people have been allowed to vent or at least hear an interpretation of the group’s unconscious fantasies and, hence, becoming less inclined to act out, I’ve found, as many have, the opposite: group process serving as an excuse for acting out, allowing people to say insulting things, or, in the name of therapy, behaving in the most hurtful ways.

There have been on average 100 attendees at every IPA convention, about 2700 bodies overall. Accounting for repeat attendees (there are at my count three who’ve never missed a conference) as well as for death and the infirmities of old age, both of which have thinned the ranks of our founding members, the fact remains that hundreds of good psychological historians have never returned because of the hurtful things that have been said to them at the group process analysis. It is, of course, not only group process which has driven some away; people find many rationalizations, as well as real reasons, for never coming back. Nevertheless, each of us knows scores of fine scholars—and there must be many more we don’t know about—who should still be with us but who refuse to be part of the IPA because of what was said to them, or because of what they’ve seen regularly at the annual conventions.

It is simply false, and wrong, to pretend that no harm has been done, that only a few people have been affected, that the absence of many is irrelevant. That contemptuous, self-defeating attitude is one of the reasons IPA membership has remained relatively small all these years. I’ve never been one to air our dirty little secrets in public; it’s unprofessional and counter-productive. And while I know full well that critical observations run the risk of being dismissed as “defensive,” the fact remains that, in practice, on either the giving or receiving end, narcissistic self-indulgence and the hurtful acting-out of some group members have been for many the core experience of IPA group process, despite all its theoretical good intentions. Psychological history is the worse for it.

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