A response to the GASi Sunday Online Large Group

My Proposal/dream

I would like to develop median group dialogue although I am not currently active.  I have continued making the occasional presentation and attended the quarterly group but not recently.  I am not a qualified Group Analyst having only completed the introductory course and 2 years Median Group training with Pat de Maré.  This has meant I have never really been involved in small group therapy and have no private practice (or income) and therefore my focus is on the application of the median group.  Unfortunately since no longer involved with prison based median group dialogue I have not been operational and unable to afford attending symposia.  I am grateful that the online large group has got me involved once more and might have very interesting future prospects.

I think that the best experience for me was the online quarterly group where all participants were on one screen.  The cost at £20 was also much more affordable than the additional cost of a day in London

I would love to see a continuing structure of 5 parallel one page monthly zoom groups (up to 25 per group) and a quarterly larger group.  Such a development could realise the thinking of Basil Beaumont an early influence on Pat de Maré.

In the 1930s Basil Beaumont published a paper for the Society for Creative Psychology that was important in persuading Pat de Maré to explore larger groups.

In this age of mechanisation and separateness it has become increasingly difficult , in spite of modern means of communication, for people to attain even a measure of integration, owing to the diversity of ideas and professions and the separation of the sexes in childhood.  The technique of group work has been introduced as a method by which the rapidly growing tendency towards separateness may be combated and overcome.  For integration should not only be practised within the group, but once achieved, should aid the group members in their cooperation with others who have been unable to to benefit by this method.

Beaumont hoped that such groups once started would spread amoebically.

Pat de Maré himself says the following in his paper “the median group and the psyche”

Moreno wrote, in Who Shall Survive? (1953), that when the Messiah comes it will be in the form of a group. For us working with median groups, this is a feasible suggestion. If twenty members of a median group after two years could each take on a similar project, within ten years several million people would be involved, and we suggest this as a deliberate strategy. 

I would propose that the 5 online groups become many and their membership ultimately supplemented by a diverse population of members recruited by the sortition process used for Citizens Assemblies.  They are rewarded through a points system much like that employed by the You Gov online public opinion survey organisation – 500 points equals £50.  Citizens Assembly members so far have been accommodated for weekends of discussion and paid a small gratuity.

Over time the online group members hopefully recognise the value and the pleasure of being respected and valued for their contributions and the group becomes community based and takes its place as a group that can also function as a Citizens Assembly and participate in a reformed and genuine democratic process.

David Parsons
david.parsons27@ntlworld.com