internetsociometry
Ann Hale
annehale at swva.net
Sun Sep 17 14:10:07 CDT 2006
Here's about as far as I am willing at this point to go with this: have a group of people identify themselves as willing to explore internet sociometry as an experiment. This group of individuals, not all of grouptalk, or all of ASGPP, but persons who want to sign on, hires an expert who has expertise in this area who will then make a proposal to the group who hold the contract. They then discuss the process and how (1) the data will be used; (2) whether or not it will be made public and in what form; and (3) how people will be cared for during and after the experimental process.
Once people have identified they are interested in exploring this notion, we can total up how much people are willing to pay, and see if we can hire someone for that amount. Then, discuss their proposal and vote whether to do it or not.
----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Blatner
To: list at grouptalkweb.org
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 12:10 PM
Subject: internetsociometry
Dear Cynthia and group,
I try to keep my mind open about this, willing to sacrifice some non-essential elements in the service of new possibilities. The question then arises, which elements are and are not essential?
Cynthia, dare to go a step beyond posing your "wondering" questions--do you have even a glimpse of a hunch about some possible variables or answers?
Another major variable: In propinquity, direct physical presence, moves to drift away are more accessible: One can ask, "am I boring you," or "did you just get annoyed by what I said?" or "is this approach of interest to you?
In my case, my curiosity is in bare balance with the pull of other projects... a bit more annoyance, I'm off to do other things and this email discussion gets back burner'd.
So online discussions are in competition with a postmodernist, multi-tasking world, what Gergen called a "saturated" self. It raises the bar on the required degree of relevance.
This is also true with social psychology and its demographic changes: When you're stuck in a small town, you make the most of small talk, often requiring lubrication with alcohol to numb the sheer banality of the exchange. Interest is not likely to get satisfied in many contexts--marriage being a common field of lack of intellectual or interest compatibility. With the internet and mobility, friends become more attractive than family--and this is not surprising, as one can choose friends (i.e., unconscious sociometric selection).
oh, well, back to work. Warmly, adam
----- Original Message -----
From: CGayle
To: list at grouptalkweb.org
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: Sociometric group phone conference
I wonder about a cyberspace community, where perhaps a good percentage of people do not know each other. I have found cyber relationships quite different than phone connections, and both a planet away from meeting people in the flesh. (Just try a turn at online dating to understand).
I wonder how many people who know/don't know each other would impact the exploration you imagine. And wonder, is cyber tele the same as in-person tele. I don't think so. (Again, try online dating). A starting point might be: Get list of everyone online and each person could tally how many we know. Could do our own social atoms/networks of people we know, and then see how they connect up.
Cynthia Gayle
Seattle
----- Original Message -----
From: BARNETT WEISS
To: Adam Blatner ; list at grouptalkweb.org
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: Sociometric group phone conference
Adam Blatner <adam at blatner.com> wrote:
Ah, Bud, on this I tend to side with Ann Hale, and discussed the issues a bit in my 2000 4th Revised edition of Foundations of Psychodrama (pp.196-199). It's not a matter just of courage, it's having a mechanism in place for follow-up, for working through. Many people in ordinary groups tend to avoid open discussion of conflicts because they don't know of a specific and accepted -- even expected-- method that would be implemented were such conflicts to be exposed.
AH Adam: This is patently not true in community building sessions with people who have never participated in anything like it.People go through the stage of blaming and fixing and chaos before reaching that stage in which they are just there with one another and it is an incredible feeling when it happens and led well, it happens rather regularly. If you want to take a look at some of the most incredible stuff like this, take a look at Bob Robert's work which is on the verge of being made into a major motion picture see www.mysoulsaidtome.com as well as www.projectreturn.com
It was also the case in the Tgroups and for that matter in the touchy feely bangem on the head encounter groups that were quite helpful for many people and a disaster for some. EST has about the largest record of people exposing themselves completely over the course of two or less weekends and I mean exposing themselves with quite amazing results and far less disaster than any form of therapy can boast.
I just don't get it!! Why can't this group of people dedicated to the work whose very basis is sociometry find a way to use it together?
(I touch on this in my paper on conflict resolution on my website.) Another way to say this is that if one doesn't know how to think or talk about something, one tends to avoid it. (I personally think this last sentence accounts for far more "repression" and other forms of neurotic and social avoidances and self-deceptions, compartmentalizations and compensating maneuvers, than sexual issues.) So my approach involves building up a full infrastructure of skills, agreements, arrangements, and so on.
At this moment, I've been multi-tasking and contemplating a chapter for my book that deals with the kinds of drama on the internet that involves literally millions of players internationally, virtual worlds, role playing-- is it theatre? Some think so.
So this conversation is synchronistic.
In another context I was contemplating tribal psychology versus postmodern urban psychology--more specifically in connection with an observed dilution of family feeling in many modern extended families. Some folks try to counter this by arranging for reunions and working on genealogy, but in other families (my own--more my kids' generation), it seems as if friends have more tele than family.
This is elemental due to generations of secrets and pacts. Murray Bowen was fond of saying that it took at least 3 generations to produce the forces adequate to create Schizophrenia. Even there, the work that Peck did back in the 70s to prevent seriously mentally ill people from being hospitalized was done with the family gathering together at least 40 people, relatives friends etc. Then Peck and his troup would go there and do essentially their crisis version of community building and most often, a breakthrough would occur and not only wouldn't the IP not have to be hospiatlized, a bunch of networking would have taken place and a lot of other folks lives brightened up some even stopped their process of serious depression and suicidal planning that had not been exposed prior to those meetings.
Why was family more tight in the past? Not just shared history, but, I think, the dynamic of "recourse," as in who can you tell that cousin A wasn't living up to her bargain? Are there aunts, uncles, grandparents, other cousins, who can "lean" on cousin A to play by the family rules? Without such connections to appeal to, if cousin A doesn't give a fig for the extended family, then there is no particular reason to trust cousin A. So A asks you for a job, based on being part of the family. You give cousin a the job, but you trust him because if he rips you off, pushes the family entitlement too much, embezzles money, you have his parents and siblings and others to lean on him! Dilute that, and what is to stop him from betraying you?
I've been thinking of the dynamic of "recourse" in thinking about a number of cultural shifts, the place of women in traditional societies, how families are "bound together" not only by economics, but by family - neighbor pressure, and how this whole network of arrangements is impossibly diluted and deeply threatening by urbanization, mobility, higher education, multi-cultural mixing, etc.
I'm not sure I take your point as the English are fond of saying.
Well, that may seem like a digression, but it isn't, because it illustrates a major problem with sociometry: What is to motivate you to stay with the group and work things out with me? Why not just drop away? What dis-incentives are there, what pressures? In fact, given a certain up-welling of stress or drop in reciprocity dynamics, folks in our network have indeed just dropped out--it happens all the time!!! They just stop emailing. They won't answer emails. And few others go out of their way to pursue them-- Hey, Joe or Jane, wha' happened to you? You were there, among us, and then you disappeared! Hello? Golly, no reply. Was it something I said?
I don't think it has anything to do with people being offended or hurt. The group simply isn't giving them what they want or need and so they go away and remain on the sidelines until the next time or not.
Here we are speaking of people on this list serve most of whom are very experienced TEPs by and large, training people and doing quite amazing work as far as I can see. If this group list serve doesn't serrve them adequately or becomes a waste of their time, they will simply delete a bunch of messages until something moves them. I know I have done that at times.
Moreno's early experiments were distorted by their happening in a socio-culturally somewhat fixed context, in which the group members couldn't easily extricate themselves physically, they lived in full physical contact, met, shared meals, worked, and did other things together. Not that these principles that he began to develop (notice I say began, because I consider the field still in its infancy!) were not useful, but they were limited. How do we modify them in contexts in which the circumstances are different?
Wow!! I would love to be in a pd playing Moreno to your comment and see where that would take us.
(Similarly, 2-D geometry doesn't fit 3-d space--then it's called "solid geometry)-- nor does it deal with problems of hyperspace.... Mathematics, astronomy, atomic physics-- certain things change when one goes beyond the middle level of phenomena...)
Again, I'm not sure I take your point. Sociometry in a closed group does have applications for an open group. Hopefully some of the people in the closed group graduated, left on good behavior. Certainly anyone working with prison populations or classrooms can see that. What happens then.
We are in a kind of closed group here with people being able to leave. One of the rules that is set up in community building is that you are asked to stick it out through the hard stuff. Keep coming back. Well??
My 64 cents worth.
Moistly Bud
Well, my 34 cents. Warmly, Adam
----- Original Message -----
From: BARNETT WEISS
To: list at grouptalkweb.org
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: Sociometric group phone conference
Dear Ann:
I certainly hear you loud and clear. I personally do not have any concern about these issues for myself and I certainly can see how others may be concerned for themselves. My life has always been about being open and available to risk where I have felt there was great possibilities. There is no insurance for those type of things in my estimation. In fact, I remember Malidoma Some telling us that his elders laughed at the notion of insurance where it really counted. Imagine insurance for initiation :-) If it is safe, it cannot be real initiation, If it is real initiation, it cannot be safe. There is always the risk of madness or death.
Any suggestions that you have as to how to implement and address the concerns you mention would be great.
For me, to not find a way to jump off together would be more than a shame. Of course, only those people who are willing to be involved would be in the voting and subsequent sociogram published amongst us and possibly with names altered or letters assigned should there be publication. It is even possible to keep the data private to some extent with members being assigned numbers. And the final groups simply published as numbers. Of course, I would hope we could be totally open and that is only my wish. If we cannot find a way to establish trust amongst ourselves sufficient to embark on this type of project, then it makes quite a statement in terms of our committment to these values. How can we possilby do this for clients and not be able to do it with ourselves?
As for Moreno's fears that you mention, I had numerous talks with him as well and I think he was also talking about the courage to be exposed and the lack of it in leaders who must of course be the ones to begin the model effectively. When I pushed him about doing this begining with the US contingency, he would chuckle and I would chuckle and that was where it remained. As Roosevelt once said, I really think "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." This fear is the main thing which holds us back from breaking through not just for ourselves, but for others as well. It is the question of Who Shall Survive?
In community building sessions, everyone has to go through the various stages before ending up with that stage in which you have created the complete sense of saftey in which all blaming and lecturing and fixing stops and people are just people sharing with one another with no further purpose than to be accepting of eachother.
I am in hopes that together, we can find a way to proceed. This discussion is already a beginning at least in my experience with this group.
Blessings all, Bud
Ann Hale <annehale at swva.net> wrote:
Bud, I can understand your excitement about applied sociometry "close to home", our own network. I have often wanted our collective to use our tools more advantageously.
Moreno was quite clear that people's fears of (1) speaking their choices and (2) knowing others choices for oneself could greatly alter the spontaneity of their answers and choice data. He, I and many others concur that preparation for any sociometric data gathering needs to have clarity about how people's feelings will be cared for, the resources people have for handling conflictual aspects, the use made of the data, and other privacy and safety concerns. The care with which these are tended to can increase the usefulness of all that comes later. It DOES slow things down, and can be judged as solely resistance, but I prefer we not jump on methods without looking at the whole process.
We know how to gather data, we know and can create any number of methods, but what is in place for these concerns I mention? Ann
----- Original Message -----
From: BARNETT WEISS
To: Adam Blatner ; list at grouptalkweb.org
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 1:08 PM
Subject: Sociometric group phone conference
Dear People:
I thought that I would propose something that could develop into a powerful tool for all of us and the progression of all of our skills in cooperation with one another as well as beginning the process of sociometrizing ASGPP.
I can set up a phone conference which will be recorded for free and as many as 100 persons can listen in on the conference.
We would choose a topic to be discussed as for example one of those already begun, or we could list a series of topics and vote on those as well.
Then everyone would vote sociometrically on the 5 persons they would most like to hear speak about the topic in a sociometric fashion listing all the persons they would choose down to a certain level of choice which we could determine. They would also give their rational for why they chose the persons they did. It could be just 5 in order or more. Anyone feeling strongly about not wanting a particular person on the panel could also state that.
Also, people would list the persons they know or with whom they have worked, or feel that they have had enough contact with even over the list serve or in other communications non face to face to be listed as part of their active social atom. We would see their active social atom volume in terms of the group. I think both the face to face atom as well a second atom being the internet or other communication contact only with no face to face personal contact.
A simple sociogram would be developed and available for all to see and out of that voting, the top 5 persons would come together on the conference call and begin to discuss the topic doing so for 1 hour at most. Others would be able to dial in and listen and would not be able to talk. Since this conference would be recorded, all those who were unable to be on the call as listeners would be able to listen at another time.
I think this could be a great experiment as well as beginning a process that I have long wished for.
Of course I would also like to propose a sociogram similarly done for all those who intend to attend the Brooklyn conference on the criteria "Who would you most like to spend an hour with at the conference in a group of 4 or 5?" And provide that time for everyone to actually meet with the persons grouping as best as possible. Of course this is a totally personal criteria not necessarily task oriented. We could instead make it task oriented. If we do something like this, we will be laying the groundwork for a tradition that will greatly diferentiate our organization from any other in history to my knowledge on the basis Dr. Moreno's major guiding principal.
Blessings to all, Bud
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