The Power of Group Dynamics | Dr. Özge Kantas

Have you ever wondered when and where was the first ever group psychotherapy practiced in the world? That was during World War I and it was in Vienna with sex workers. So that was already a work setting. Up and back in that time a young medical doctor Jacob Moreno thought these sex workers were oppressed, facing so many injustices and lacking social support and so many insecurities in terms of their health determinants. Therefore he thought how about me bring them together, circle them up and let them to help each other with their weaknesses, with their strengths so that they can leverage each other in a playful way. And his ideas stemmed from his observations from the kids of Vienna playing in the parks freely even during a war zone. Those kids who were able to play in the park were able to create their own surplus reality. They were dreaming another reality, they were creating, they were imagining another world for themselves by playing it out, by role-playing in circles, taking turns, turning their pain points into gain points. So maybe that was only an empty chair left on the side of the street or maybe it's a broken bench in the other corner of the park. They were placing a god to that chair and ask for peace or maybe they were creating a palace and talk with the king and give some strategy to the king about how to end the war. So those kids were able to heal themselves through role-playing, through imagination, through some purposeful play. And Dr Moreno's another attempt to utilize these principles were in a refugee camp again during World War I. And in that refugee camp he realized that there was so much chaos going on. These people experiencing a collective trauma, lacking control in their lives. Whatever they were doing was so much under control and rigidity in such a camp. Therefore he said how about me creating a unity and a group with them and ask them what they want to do, how they want to do a division of labor, with whom do they want to live in a tent or with whom do they want to handle certain tasks like their daily routines. I'll get the cooking, I'll take care of the kids, I'll do this and this. So he let free play in that sense, in the words of kids. And that chaos turned into a unity, a mutual aid group where people were healing and helping each other. They were naming their own problems, they were connecting with each other, nourishing themselves with their own strengths despite their own weaknesses because someone else was taking care of that part. So they were co-creating, not only collaborating, they were co-creating and illuminating each other's life. A couple of years later during 1930s, Dr. Moreno immigrated to the United States and in the annual meeting of American Psychiatric Association he said, I have an idea. How about rather than trying to individually treat people, we bring them together and let them interact and assess, intervene and use their interaction, that interpersonal dynamics, as a treatment tool and let's call it group psychotherapy. It was not only accepted by psychiatrists and psychologists but also it was well received by sociologists, anthropologists, political leaders, teachers, leaders, because that was back to basics. Think about your childhood skills, how you were playing with others, how you are learning from your peers, how you are like, I got you. Therefore he said a truly therapeutic procedure cannot have less an objective than the whole humankind. However, to make it happen we need to address the within group relationships so that we can handle the entire group, which means there is no adequate therapy that can be prescribed as long as humankind is not a unity in some fashion and as long as its organization remains unknown. That means we need to understand what is going on within that organization, within that unity, within that group, by saying group in any forms, because all the harm and all the healing can happen in groups. For example in work, an average adult spends almost half of their adult life in work, right? So when I'm teaching my organizational behavior course in the MBA program, I emphasize this a lot to my students because I want them to understand that every role they play becomes a part of their personality. Group as a whole approach also applies to their personality organization. Their personality is more than the sum of the traits they have or personality characteristics they have. Likewise, an organizational culture is the personality of that company, right? How they are relating with each other. So it's more than the sum of employees coming together, that's their interaction. Roles do not emerge from the self, but the self emerges from the roles we play. If we have new roles, if we try out new roles, our personality, our culture, our nation, our products, our services, they can change. So here is an example about their social atom in the beginning of the semester. I ask them to tell me who they are. So simply they toss their names. These are the things in the middle of those circles. Their names or their job titles or their nicknames whatsoever. Then I ask them to expand who they are with the role relationships they have within with others. Then they added components such as I am a dog owner, I am a mom, I am a dad, I'm a lacrosse coach, I am this and this, this and that. So your co-workers, your neighbors, your friends, your family members, they are not one-dimensional. Neither you are. You have complexities of different roles within you that you play it out. Therefore, that's their first aha moment. This doesn't look like an organizational chart, right? But it tells more about their relationship with each other, similarities and differences, and how and what they can co-create together. So that's the beginning of the semester. And this is the last class of the semester after 14 weeks. And they realize they have even more. The parts of themselves who is a perfectionist, the part of themselves who likes fun and leisure, the part of themselves that apparently looks opposite but can coexist. Therefore, group has everything within that its members need. We don't need to fight over who is right, who is wrong, but our differences, our diversity brings that resourcefulness. Both to your person as an organization or both of the organization that you work at as a culture. This calls another topic that we call as trauma-informed approaches. This is from CDC. This is not me. This is from CDC. How trauma is an inherent part of our lives. That we feel stuck, that we don't feel well. The spectrum between well-being to ill-being, it doesn't come one day, right? It doesn't come in all of a sudden. So we need to design it. We need to properly make it happen. How? When I go over those principles, I'm sure you will realize how well they align with group psychotherapy principles. What was happening with the kids, with the sex workers, with the refugees, or wherever else. Because for a group to be a helpful group rather than a harmful group, there needs to be a psychological safety. There needs to be an empowerment and choice. There needs to be a collaboration, trustworthiness, diversity, and peer support, mutual aid to happen. Psychological safety is not the cherry on the top. It's the egg in the batter that you need to whisk everything with. Therefore, even product ecosystems or service ecosystems work better when it is grouped as a unity. Like whoever likes Apple products probably like because under one iCloud account they can have their Apple Watches, MacBooks, and iPhones and everything working and co-creating together. Or maybe the most effective way of cooking your favorite dishes is when salt, pepper, oil, and all of those spices are organized together in a proper way with their relationships. Even AI works better if you treat AI as your co-worker, as your colleague, in a playful way. So how many of you love using AI? And if you realize the best practices using AI comes with when you give playful prompts to it. Such as, pretend you are this and that. Act as if this and this. And you describe the relationship. Describe the relationship, the way of relatedness that you want to convey while creating that content, while AI creates that content for you. Therefore, you need to support three basic psychological needs that is universal to everyone. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness to make it playful, to make it psychologically safe, and to make it innovative and creative. Abraham Maslow says almost all innovation and creativity involves a purposeful play. Dr. Martin Luther King didn't say, I have a strategic plan to move forward. He said, I have a dream, right? He invited everyone to dream again with him. That was his call to play it out so that everyone played their parts in a playful way and an autonomous way so that that group of people who followed him, who believed him, played their parts within a new role for equity, for social rights, for justice, for co-creation of a better society. So I asked AI to create a couple of visuals for us. They are far from perfect, but if I want to move forward, I can play it around, right? Add this, remove that, make it this color. So it's always all the iteration, innovation comes with playing it out. Let's sum up all the dots, all the points that I am conveying here. We best learn when? When we are playing together. And the best play is in groups. However, for a play to be a safe play, we need our basic psychological needs to be met. Otherwise, even kids lose their intrinsic motivation to play. If the play becomes too rigid, too given, too structured, they're like, meh, I don't want to play it. Because they don't feel cared for, they don't feel autonomous, even though they are competent to do so. Therefore, for a best play to happen in groups, we need an arc, and that arc is our basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence. As a therapist, I know that not everything is therapy, but anything can be therapeutic if we design it accordingly. Think about the empty chair I showed in the first place, and now you have two options to play in your minds. Place your childhood version to an empty chair, if you want, and imagine what would you like to teach that child about this world, so that that child could play his or her or their part differently in the script. The other alternative game that you can play is, maybe take as much as empty chairs you want, and make it this as your imaginary advisory board. Who would you like to make to sit in those chairs? Einstein, who said play is the ultimate form of research, right? Is it Elon Musk? Do you want to pick the brain of Susan B. Anthony? Who is that? Maybe it's your role model cousin? Whoever that you want to put in those chairs, role play it in your mind, and who knows what you will hear from them in your imagination. I invite you to play again with groups. Thank you.