Complexity and Group Processes: A Radically Social Understanding of Individuals

The increasing complexity of interdependence between people in modern life makes it more important than ever to understand processes of human relating. In the West we tend to base our understanding of relating on the individual. Complexity and Group Processes suggests an alternative way of understanding human relating. The key questions covered in this book are: · who am I and how have I come to be who I am? · who are we and how have we come to be who we are? · how are we all changing, evolving, and learning? These are fundamental questions in the study of human interaction, and the answers explored in Complexity and Group Processes are highly relevant not only for therapeutic groups but also those who are managing, leading and working in organizations.

Table of Contents:
Part I: Social Selves and Group Processes: Taking the Perspective of Complex Responsive Processes. The Social Evolution of the Person. Complexity and Group Processes. The Fundamental Importance of Communicative Interaction. The Emergence of Self in the Conversation of Gestures. The Physiological Basis of Mind, Self and Society. The Importance of Belonging: Vicissitudes of Attachment and Separation. Some Clinical Implications of a Theory of Complex Responsive Processes. Part II: Internal Worlds and Social Systems: Defining the Difference Between the Perspective of Complex Responsive Processes and Psychoanalysis. Freud on the Individual and the Group. The Movement of Western Thought: Pointing to the Antecedents of Complex Responsive Processes and Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Locating Freud's Thought and its Later Developments in the Tradition of Western Thought. The Development of Relational and Intersubjective Psychoanalysis. The Incorporation of Systems Thinking into Psychoanalysis. Evolutionary Psychology. Part III: Dealing with Paradox in Thought: From Eliminating to Living with Paradox. Foulkes' Dualistic Understanding of the Relationship Between the Individual and the Social: The Elimination of Paradox. Part IV: Complex Responsive Processes: The Movement of Paradox and the Transformation of Identity.

About the Author :
Ralph Stacey is a member of the Institute of Group Analysis in London and works as a group therapist in the NHS. He is also Professor of Management and Director of the Complexity and Management Centre at the Business School of the University of Hertfordshire. He is co-editor of the Routledge series Complexity Emergence in Organizations and author of Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations: Learning and Knowledge Creation.

Review :
'Stacey entreats us to an intriguing theoretical journey that consists of a critical discussion of a number of perspectives on group theory/process... a rich source book, particularly for those interested in the forging and development of theory.' - Martin Weegmann, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, December 2005