a first step from Rome (long)

[Toni Petrinovich]

Harrison - YES!!!  and then again, YES!!!

Blessings,
Toni
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Harrison Owen 
  To: OSLIST at 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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