Beneath the Surface

Unconscious Dynamics in Self and Groups

INSEAD Leadership Programme for Senior Executive

India (ILPSE), Cohort 11, Module 02

January 8-11, 2023

Taj Lands End Hotel, Mumbai, India

Offered by
Group Relations India

Booklet Design: Smriti Chanchani & Aditi Chanchani

 This workshop titled Beneath the Surface aims to provide a space to explore
how unconscious material shapes our personality, informs the way we
relate, how we take up roles, and how we exercise leadership. Given that
unconscious processes also shape how groups function in relation to their
task, this influences the roles we take up in groups as well.
We have a notion of ourselves as objective and rational beings, driven by
logic and facts. When, in fact, each of us goes through life with deeply held
conclusions, in the form of injunctions and scripts, based on our personal
history and unexplored cultural dictates. These, when not relevant to
current contexts and realities, hinder our ability to build relationships, make
effective decisions and offer appropriate leadership.
Pioneered by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, in 1957,
and introduced in India in 1973, group relations methodology was developed
from the work of social scientists, psychoanalysts, and socio analysts such as
Freud, Klein, Bion, Lewin, Miller, Turquet, and Chattopadhyay, among others,
while Berne and Steiner developed the work on scripts.
01
Workshop Task
This workshop “Beneath the Surface” has the following primary task
To explore how unconscious processes shape our personality and
the relationships we develop, and how this in turn shapes the roles
we take up in groups and systems we’re part of. This thread of the
task is intertwined with exploring how unconscious processes in
groups, at the level of the group, also shape the relationships and
roles we take up.
We hope participating in the workshop will help you discover more about
your own patterns, desire, and resistances to take or shape your roles in
groups and systems, and how these insights may be applied in your everyday
life. The workshop is designed to offer this through multiple ways - your
direct experience, sense-making of past experiences, the use of conceptual
frameworks, and exploration with others.
Workshop Events and their Tasks
The workshop is designed as a flow of different events– each with its own task,
but each contributing to the overall primary task. Though they do have the
boundary of time, task, space, and group composition, your experiences and
insights from one event will inevitably be carried forward into another. Some
events are “here and now” which focus on one’s present experience and use
that as the material to understand unconscious processes. Other events have
the focus on reflection & insight generation. All of them however privilege the
idea of learning from one’s direct experience as a powerful and sustainable way
of learning, rather than being taught or told.
02
Primary Task Opening Session: to introduce the workshop, to cross the boundary from the
world outside into the workshop, and explore the experience of taking up one’s
role as a participant.

Interactive Concept Sessions (ICS): to engage with conceptual frameworks

that offer a way of understanding the presence and influence of unconscious
processes, and link these to one’s own experience as a way of meaning-making.

River of Life (RoL): to explore how one’s interpretation of early experiences

result in unconscious scripts that continue to influence one’s identity,
relationships, and the roles one takes up in different settings.

Confluence (C): to explore, in a collective setting, one’s experience of the

workshop.

Studying Group Processes (SGP): to study unconscious dynamics in groups,

how these may influence relationships and roles one takes up, and how one
exercises leadership in groups – an opportunity to learn from direct experience
in the here and now.

Reflection and Application Groups (RaAG): to explore the implications of

unconscious processes on how one perceives systems and the way one takes up
roles in them. It provides the opportunity to begin the process of applying one’s
workshop experience and insights to back-home issues and situations. The idea
is not that one finds solutions, but to develop new ways of perceiving and thus
have new perspectives and possibilities for experimentation.

Closing Session: to reflect in plenary about one’s overall workshop experience

and insights, while continuing to build from others’ experiences and insights.
 Some Concepts Intrinsic to the Workshop
We offer this section on concepts without intending it to be either dogmatic or
definitive. These concepts are offered as an indication of how the staff in the
workshop broadly understand them and work with them. We refer to them as
intrinsic because they have influenced the design of this workshop.

Unconscious Processes: At every moment of our lives, whether we are

awake or asleep, there are internal process that we are not aware of, termed
Workshop Management and Staff unconscious. Unconscious processes within us are often aspects of ourselves, or
our experiences, that we repress and forget as they cause us embarrassment or
Director: Rosemary Viswanath even pain. However, we expend a lot of psychic energy ensuring these remain
Associate Director: Ganesh Anantharaman ‘inaccessible’ resulting in limiting new possibilities and creative options for our
Administrator: Vanya Joseph own development.

The Workshop Director, Associate Director and Administrator form the A characteristic of unconscious processes is their almost involuntary pull
Directorate of the workshop. towards a pattern or habitual way of doing and being. Habitual assumptions
that are left unexamined for their current relevance; roles that we end up
Consultant Staff will be drawn from among: taking on irrespective of the system we are in; beliefs about the world and our
Anuradha Prasad own self-concept – each have deep roots in unconscious material. It is agreed
across traditions – whether psychoanalytic or spiritual that these unconscious
Chandan Shamnani
patterns are set in place very early in our lives, and even if dysfunctional,
Gagandeep Singh
continue to be defended. The defence itself being a process we are unaware of!
Ganesh Anantharaman
Kartikeyan V This unconscious ‘not knowing’ serves the purpose of avoiding exploration of
Rosemary Viswanath questions such as: why is it that interpersonal relationships I am involved in
Uma Ravikumar follow an almost predictable path? what roles do I end up taking in groups?
Vartika Jaini do these roles serve the task or divert from the task and end up serving the
Yash Kaul undertow of unconscious needs (my own and collusively that of the group)?

Staff and members are both participants in the workshop, though they are in Here and Now Experience: The direct experiences that are available to a
different roles. Staff are deployed to events in the role of consultants and carry group as data during an ongoing session. The here and now internal experience
with them also the role of collective management. As consultants they offer of individuals would be available to the group if individuals share it, so that the
interventions and working hypotheses, appropriate to the task of that event. group can work with what it means in terms of group processes.

05 06
 The Individual in the Group: Quite often individuals in a group
unconsciously take in the group’s wishes, and then take on roles to fulfil
these unconscious wishes. The wishes are usually about needing to reduce
the group’s fears or anxieties. These emotions are often unconscious and not
articulated directly by the members. However, they usually come in the way of
the group focusing on its task and engaging with it creatively and effectively.
Group Relations work focuses on these phenomena of unconscious processes
in groups, and ways in which individuals get set up by groups. Individuals also
tend to take up particular roles because of their own unconscious needs, also
called valence.
Primary Task: It is that most essential task which needs to be focused on
and performed for the system to have meaning and purpose, and for it to
fulfil its objectives. Other tasks of the system (and the primary tasks of the
various subsystems of the whole system) are expected to contribute towards
meaningful engagement with the primary task of the system.
Boundaries: A boundary helps differentiate what lies within a system or sub-
system and what lies outside it. Task, time, territory, resources, and roles are
typical boundaries. The sentient boundary is another kind of boundary – this
is the sense of belonging and emotions /feelings linked to individuals, groups
and sub-systems. The boundary between the inner world of the individual and
the external environment is another kind of boundary. What is useful to pay
attention to is the extent to which these boundaries are acknowledged, and
how a particular boundary supports or does not support task.
Leadership: Leadership functions at the boundary of a system and its
environment/context, and focuses on how the system engages with its task.
Thus, leadership is a process rather than a product - i.e., it is not a position and
not fixed with one person either. It requires relentless focus on the task while
keeping a view of the whole system that is embedded in its context. Leadership
implies developing clarity about the task, using resources and dealing with
constraints that the system and the environment throw up, and encouraging
others to do the same. Aspects of leadership are values, vision and shared
meaning, an ability to work with uncertainty, acknowledging not knowing, and
self -awareness which in turns allows appropriate relating with others in one’s
role.
07
Relatedness and Relationship: Relatedness is the picture of past
relationships that one holds in one’s mind, partly consciously and partly
unconsciously. Relationship is the way in which people relate with one another
in the present situation. However, the picture of relatedness held in the mind at
times comes in the way of developing appropriate relationships in the present
context. For example, one’s relatedness with authority may be based on one’s
past relationship with one’s parents, older relatives, or teachers. If these remain
unexplored, one may keep projecting, inappropriately, this past picture or
relatedness onto current authority figures, leading to crossed wires or unmet
expectations.
Hypotheses: Working hypotheses and other forms of interventions are
offered by the staff of the workshop based on their own sensing of the situation
to highlight unconscious dynamics as they take place in the group. Engaging
with the hypothesis may encourage new perspectives and fresh insights
about what is happening in the here and now. Working hypotheses are not
judgments or final statements, nor are they intended as ‘feedback’ or to give
direction.
A hypothesis is a way for anyone to puzzle about and offer for further
exploration what maybe happening, particularly unconscious aspects such as
what needs of the group may be at play, and in order to meet these needs what
roles individuals get set up to take on behalf of the group, why this may be
happening, and its implications for groups in terms of their task.
About Group Relations India (GRI)
Group Relations India (GRI) founded in 2013, is committed to making the
potential of group relations methodology available to a wide section of Indian
society. GRI uses systems psychodynamic and socio-analysis approaches, which
pay particular attention to unconscious processes. It is seen as a home for GR in
India.

www.grouprelationsindia.org