Group Process is a Success (response article)

Sharing our emotional reactions to the day’s events at the IPA Convention has worked very well over the past 27 years. True, some attendees complain (and don’t come back), but they don’t really believe in studying emotions of groups so nothing is lost. True, sometimes (not often) some people feel insulted briefly, but they say so, and the issue is handled in the group and doesn’t fester. Discussing emotional matters makes a big difference in the group. During all this time, we haven’t split into several groups, we don’t complain in the hallways, and we bring up our differences in the group and usually resolve them there, without the usual group difficulties. Since we discuss lots of upsetting matters in our conventions, that’s an astonishingly successful outcome of our daily group process sessions.

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