Sample outline of the Group Conversation Method

Here is a sample of my upcoming outline of "Reducing Social Tension and Conflict Through the Group Conversation Method" by Rachel Davis Dubois and Mew-Soong Li

 Notes: "GC" stands for Group Conversation, The FangSong font is my personal inpu, [] is deleated or altered lines.

Chapter 5: Reducing Group Tensions

I.      Group conversation has been founded on the concept that a healthy self-acceptance precedes the acceptance of others.

A.     The healthy person who wishes can begin by trying to understand why he rejects others; in so doing, he can start to change his own attitudes. We underline healthy, for Group Conversation is not planned to work primarily with the psychologically crippled person, ill with deep and serious conflicts. This is the province of the psychotherapist.

1.      Laurens van der Post speaks of race prejudice as a form of self rejection. The individual who cannot accept himself cannot accept others because his hatred and fear of certain aspects of his own nature onto others.

a)     I think this is a great insight that ties loosely into karma and ties strongly into Jerry Jampolski’s extension of a course in miracles work, Love is Letting Go of Fear, where he talks about the idea of getting what you give. If outcome is a result of your minds lens which with you look through, prejudice and other forms of fear cannot come from anywhere else but inside the individual.

b)     Thus the problem of race prejudice [or any other manifestations of fear] is interpreted as the rejection of oneself reflected in others who in turn tend to look for still others to reject who they feel are below them in social order; and so the rejection goes on from individual to individual and from group to group.

2.      This self-rejection is a part of the loss of identity

a)     The prejudiced [or fearful] attitude of many white southerners also fits into this pattern of self-rejection causing hatred of the other. The South is the only part of our country to have every suffered defeat in a major war. Not only did this result in almost irreparable psychological as well as economic damage, but Southerners have been either looked down upon or romanticized by Americans from other regions.

a)     One understands the resentments and fears of many white Southerners as well as Northerners; but today we need to learn ways to develop mutual understanding [] and thus break the cycle of hatred and release the spirit of cooperation[].

3.      We have only to look within ourselves to see how difficult it is to apply to our own thinking and feeling an understanding of this self-rejection-projection process.

a)     We who have assumed the role of leadership of “GC” have encouraged each other to seek [] help in understanding our own attitudes and actions towards others.

·         This is because of bullet (Ch 5,I,A,1,dot) above. If we (the leaders) do not know what we are unconsciously projecting into the group. We are likely to A) miss it in others and B) cloud or tarnish some of the progress that could be made. I like to think of it as taking people on a trip in an airplane, you don’t want to be a “little off” in the beginning because that will lead to being drastically off course as things progress.

b)     Depth psychology tells us that creative, mature action in facing and action on today’s problems comes not by loading onto there problems our feelings of personal guilt. In that way we become immobilized.

·         Real guilt comes only out of real life situations. The individual’s commitment and action emerge when they are not held back by his sense of guilt.

·         These individual problems must be resolved before our inner energies are to be freed to work in creative, effective ways on our social problems.

·         This is to [prevent making a social problem out of a personal one]. You are converting energy. Life is growth weather we like it or realize it or not. Step back and ask what am I growing? Are you contributing to the growth of the “tree” or are you the mistletoe that is draining the life out? What are you putting energy into or feeding?

c)      We offer here our first faltering steps in the use of “GC” in helping people to understand their own attitudes. We offer it with a plea that others also experiment, feeling with van der Post that “there is a new kind of human being living ahead of the meaning of our time and knowing that the meaning has to be lived before it can be really known.”

·         The quote above means to that “to know and not to do is not yet to know”-Zen saying, to me. Another way I look at it is, “you can act you way into thinking, but you can’t think your way into action.”- unknown