The approximation of  Pat de Maré

THE LARGE GROUP

Constitutes a particular theoretical framework created by Patrick de Maré about 1975.

Organizational principles of the large group:

1.  The participants are seated face to face, on individual seats, arranged in a circle.
2. The periodical meetings have a frequency of once or twice a week.
3. The discussion is free-floating.
4. The conductor (Pat de Maré uses the term “convenor”) is non-directive although at some moment he can take on the conduction of the group. The situation is a-programmatic and the objective is to communicate by talking.

In the large group one leaves the context of the personal and familiar to enter in the sociocultural ambit where to analyze social myths (the social unconscious). The objective of the large group is not so much to socialize the individual as to humanize society through the process of des-mythification.

Characteristics of the Large Group:

1.  The large group is a situation of learning, different to the small groups which is an instinctual situation.
2. In the large group the cultural aspect plays a central function. It operates through subcultures and sociocultural prejudice.
3. Due to the very dimension of the large group (more than twenty people), it results frustrating and is able to generate hate. When this hate is organized it is transformed into endopsychic energy expressed in terms of dialogue and mini-cultures that appear in the group. Finally, the dialogue is able to produce cultural transformations.
4. The large group is a micro-culture of the society.
5. In the large group a third principle is established (beyond the pleasure principles and the reality principle) which is the principle of meaning, which emerges when we learn to understand ourselves not as organisms but as community

 Four specific traits of the large group:

 In 1975, Pat de Maré started a large group of about 30-40 people, which in time stabilized itself in around 20 persons. Pat called it a Median Group. This is the type of group with which Pat worked longer. Even if it is true that Pat experimented with large groups of more than one hundred persons, they did not have the continuity of the ones called median groups, constituted by less than 50 members.

1.  Structure or Context: This consists in the greater number of members who meet weekly in a circle. Consequently, the significant trait of the large group is its size. It gives priority to the context instead of the relational aspect, and the analysis of the conscious takes priority over the unconscious. Therefore, the large group is more a situation of learning than one of instincts (impulses?). In the large group the group is the object of treatment while the individuals are the agents.
2. Process: In the large group the basis is the dialogue. People have to learn to dialogue and, as it is a situation of learning, frustration is a trait of the large group. The hate it generates constitutes the fundament of endopsychic energy, mental energy of the Ego – which through dialogue is converted into the driving power of thought which with the pass of time can bring about not personalized companionship (Koinonia). This is to say, from hate to friendship.
3. Content: From dialogue emerges a third dimension which is neither reality, nor pleasure, but meaning. The crucial proposition of the large group is to transform the subcultural pregenital mode or the microculture of the familiocentric edipic group in an equivalent sociocultural structure. The large group tries to create a post-edipal approach.
4. Metastructure: This would correspond to a “superstructure” in terms of structuralism which is basically cultural. It relates to the diverse meanings which the context of the large group entails for everyone and the structure of which can manifest itself only through the dialogue. The meta-structure —through dialogue— contains the base of its own re-structuring.

 Koinonia:

Comes from the greek word Koiné which was the common language of all the inhabitants of the pre-classic Hellenic world. During that period of Greek history the democracy of Athens valued highly the pertaining of the individual to the “large group”, to the community. It granted the individual the category of citizenship with the capacity of influencing the decision to be taken beyond the oligarchy and the aristocracy.

Pat defined the term as “an atmosphere of impersonal fellowship, more than personal friendship, of spiritual and human participation in which people could talk, listen, see and think freely, a form of union and Concordia leading to share material goods… what happens for example when sharing, parting the bread.

Group Identity:

Group identity is based on a determined way in which we define our relation with the symbolic world. This way consists in relating to the latter through an authority figure or a leading idea with which we avoid the human being as part of the species. The difficulty of the relation between the individual members and the collectivity is that —be it an individual o be it a group— it appropriates itself of this symbolic world provoking not only the dominion of some over the others but that, moreover, makes impossible any plural deliberation.

Group Culture:

This would be the objective to obtain after a certain process of group functioning aimed at giving priority to a common culture instead of a common identity. The methodology to follow would be through group spaces of encounter and through specific methods of analysis called Group Method of Analysis. This group method of analysis implies contemplating the individual in function of the group and the latter in function of the wider community. Moreover, the group method of analysis presupposes that the individual analysis be included in the social analysis.

Group of Analysis:

Is a transitional space which uses for its work and investigation the group method of analysis. It consists in regular and continuous encounters of interested persons in confronting in group certain changes both individual and social. Moreover, this Group of Analysis is a place of continuous investigation in which every member participating can question knowledge, beliefs and ideologies in function of the changes he or she proposes him or herself.