The conference provides a context in which, away from the pressures of everyday life, participants can experience and start interpreting some of your unconscious impulses and behaviors in relation to different people and groups present at the conference. Being together in different configurations for several consecutive days allows you to explore previous and current mental and social processes from different perspectives, become aware of attitudes, feelings, reactions and fantasies. You can consider your identity as a group member, express and explore existing beliefs, as well as those that are just born during the conference, you can both apply and test them during the conference as well as relate and implement in other professional roles and situations.
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According to the Tavistock model of group operation and operating the unconscious in groups, it is possible to decompress individuals and observe the influence of inevitable group processes on what happens between people. This allows us to reflect together on how past experiences affect the present and how group dynamics work throughout history to shape the present situation. You might even think that if people had a better understanding of themselves and their role in group dynamics, many conflicts and perhaps even wars and atrocities could have been avoided.
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The conference experience is educational, not clinical, but does not propose a classic educational situation where someone teaches and someone else plays the role of a student. There is no way to predict what the individual participants will learn. Rather, it depends on how each of them uses their own authority and internal resources to participate in what is happening, reflect that experience, and contribute to the processes that are going on in the system. These are significant insightful experiences for most participants.