ISPSO 2012

European Regional Meeting

Spirit of change and the culture of imitation

in the organizational and social life
March 9-11, 2012
Sofia, Bulgaria

Organizing team:

Antoaneta Mateeva – co-chair

Haralan Alexandrov - co-chair
For information:
Toma Tomov - presenter
emil.psy@gmail.com
Sándor Takács - adviser
or
Emil Georgiev - administrator http://ispsosofia.blogspot.com/
Theme
What is the nature of the obstacles
that prevent some groups,
organizations and societies from an
authentic implementation of their
transformative ideas?
Why the initial enthusiasm with
which part of the changes is initiated
in our individual lives and those of
our organizations and communities
dissolve in the process of
transformation?
The efforts undertaken in Bulgarian standards. Unsurprisingly, they
society during the last 20 years for resorted now and again to a strategy
the promotion of democratic values of simulation, reporting inflated
in the public and organizational life results and achievements as in the
of its members is one example of this good old days of communist
kind. The reformative spirit with bureaucracy, thus projecting to the
which the transformations started outside world a presumably
came soon against a style of state acceptable image of the country.
governance and organizational
leadership that in fact abolished any
effort for bringing difference.
There is plenty of evidence that the
bulk of Bulgarian institutions
functioned in imitative mode
between 1989, when the totalitarian
state collapsed, and 2007, when
Bulgaria became full member of EU.
Involved in asymmetrical power
relations with European bureaucracy,
the national elites and the
administration in particular were
faced with the formidable task of
pushing the reforms often beyond the The idea of transformation was
capacity of the institutions and understood in terms of several
against considerable resistance in defensive assumptions:
order to catch up with the European
1. The change is a matter of
replacement of the existed
institutions and procedures
with more democratic ones.
2. The change has to occur on
the level of the government
and organizational leadership
only.
3. The change is a matter of
learning the new language and
behavior but not reflecting on
personal values and positions.
There are two main reasons celebrate the common effort to find
with which our team decided to offer more productive ways of
this theme as a focus of the regional overcoming such issues.
meeting.
The first one is that the
imitative culture can seriously affect
the efforts of these organizations and
groups engaged with the promotion
of public relations that support
recognition, tolerance and solidarity
between people. The psychoanalytic
movement was created as a
systematic endeavor to understand
the nature of such processes and to
offer practical solutions that will Participants
bring more humanity and happiness
in human relations. We are delighted to invite all
professionals in the field of
The second one is that we see psychodynamic and systemic
the regional meeting as a space in thinking and practice concerning
which the professionals from individual, organizational or social
different countries and areas of relations of our societies to come in
practice engaged with such moral Sofia and to share their valuable
missions can find the necessary knowledge and experience and to
recognition and support to share their bring back to their countries new
experience with the topic and will ideas and positive experiences.
Regional Meeting Program
Friday (March 9)
17.00 – 19.00: Getting together and
adjustment of the program
19.30 – 22.00: Optional dinner
Saturday (March 10)
9.00 – 10.30: “Leadership in the
change of child protection system in
Bulgaria” (Presentation of the
Bulgarian case related to the topic)
Presenter: Toma Tomov
(PhD, individual member of IPA)
11.00 – 12.30: Small group
consultations and discussions*
12.30 – 14.00: Lunch
14.00 – 15.30: Small group
consultations and discussions
16.00 – 17.30: Small group
consultations and discussions
17.30 – 18.00 Closing of the official thoughts, experiences and suggestions
Regional Meeting appeared during the group work.
19.00 – 22.00 Dinner
For application, additional
Sunday (March 11) information or suggestion, please
Morning – Optional visits: contact the organizing team:
• Central historical part of the
town Administrator
• Boiana church near-by Sofia Emil Georgiev -
• Mountain Vitosha – skiing 24 emil.psy@gmail.com
ours available.
Co-chairs
12.30 – 14.30 Optional lunch Antoaneta Mateeva -
aimateeva@yahoo.com
Haralan Alexandrov -
hari.alexandrov@gmail.com
* Participants will reflect on the conference
topic sharing cases from their own personal
practice or leadership experience. Please, For constant access to the main
inform early the organizers if you want to information about the event see:
offer your case for consultation or http://ispsosofia.blogspot.com/
reflection.
Each small group will be free to
choose and negotiate different methods for
group exploration of the offered cases.
The small group discussions will be
followed by a large group sharing of the