Harrison - YES!!! and then again, YES!!!
Blessings,
Toni
----- Original Message -----
From: Harrison Owen
To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 5:36 AM
Subject: Re: a first step from Rome (long)
At 01:40 PM 6/13/2002 +0200, Bernhard wrote:
This reminds me of the time, when I was a group dynamic trainer in
classical T-Group settings (following Lewins tradition) at Vienna
University/Dep.
Sociology. At that time I was myself participating in various
therapies. The more I learned about therapeutic interventions, the
more and more "problem"
cases showed up in my T-group trainings: people had break downs,
people blackmailed the group and/or the trainer with suicide
threats... I had to learn,
that my "naive" speaking that I have "also some psycho-therapeutical
knowledge" at my inicial presentation was interpreted as a kind of
invitation: not to
behave in a responsible way.
So I think it is just the other way round: I had to (and I am still
in the process) unlearn a lot of my knowledge of group dynamics and
other "facilitator
skills" to become a good OST-facilitator
Unlearning does not mean: "just forget about ist", but to transform
the knowledge, integrate/dissolve it into the whole person and then
step forward. What
I mean is: no! no special skills necessary, but yes! of course we
will be better prepared for OST &/in PEACE making
if we become wiser and emotionally better integrated (healed)
persons.
(Medical & Psycho-)Therapy is a profession, Healing is something we
all can do (co-healing our & other selves), even if we forgot that.
Bernard -- if these are just fragments, I would hate to see what happens when
you get the whole thing together. Unlearning and transforming are, I think,
critical as we move forward. For years I have found myself in a most
uncomfortable place. On the one hand it was clear to me that much of what we
(or certainly I) had learned and practiced under the general heading of "group
work" (everything from Dialogue to community building) constituted real
impediments to my effective role as a facilitator in Open Space. Some genuine
un-learning was therefor essential. At the same time the understandings of the
group and the individual gained from all of our work were, and are, profoundly
useful as we seek to understand what happens in Open Space and where we go from
here. At a practical level, as I conversed with colleagues who's practice
centered on any of the several approaches (Dialogue, Community Building,
Appreciative Inquiry etc) -- the interest seemed to be -- How can we ADD these
to Open Space? At the risk of appearing a mono-maniacal Open Space freak, I I
tried to say, there is nothing to add, it is already there. But can we please
use your deep insights to understand what is really going on? At worst all this
appeared as some kind of ego war. My way vs their way. That was never my point
or feeling. Maybe now we are in a place where we can take "The Open Space
Experience" as primary data in a natural experiment, and go from there,
understanding that it is not about one method or another, but rather -- the
reality and power of naturally occurring self-organizing systems. Someone once
asked me what my vision might be for Open Space Technology? I replied that it
was simply a half-way (interim) technology, and under the best of circumstances
we would forget all about it. No longer something special -- simply what we
did. Obviously, there is a role for OST at the moment as in Rome. But the
sooner we get beyond it, the better we will be.
Harrison
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
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