Working With a Systems-Centered Large Group Experience
Susan Gantt, PhD, CGP

Yvonne Agazarian, EdD, CGP, FAGPA, and I recently had the opportunity of co-leading a large group (94 members) using the systems-centered methods. Systems-centered groups work using functional subgrouping: members join around similarities and explore experience together, with both sides of group conflict being contained in subgroups and worked until integration takes place. This group met for 90 minutes each day over a four-day period and was the largest systems-centered group either of us had ever led. We were excited as we started and a bit apprehensive—we knew in theory it should work but we had never used systems-centered methods with such a large group.

We started the group by asking: what is it like to be coming together in this large group? One subgroup voiced tremendous excitement, and the other subgroup expressed concerns about space (I feel crowded. There’s not enough room.). By the end of the first day, one subgroup was working explicitly with the question: Can I be myself here, or will I lose my identity? The other subgroup felt confident that they could make the space they needed to be themselves inside themselves. In the second meeting, the group did its first work with the authority issue: one subgroup explored competition with each other for the leaders’ attention, and another subgroup wanted to compete for the leaders' chairs. 

As leaders, we paid attention to the subgrouping, working with the intention that no member would work alone (and no one did). We also modified the phase specific defenses. In the first day, we undid the anxiety-provoking thoughts. Then as the group began to experience their feelings and their frustrations and tense against them, we worked to reduce the defenses of tension. As the group consolidated a piece of work, we looked for the subgroup voicing the group’s next steps and kept an eye out for redundancy that would inhibit the group’s development. 

Each day brought a new piece of work with increasingly difficult issues. Once the "unspeakable" had been spoken by the group and the underlying fears concerning one leader's recent surgery had surfaced, the group was able, by the third day, to work with underlying dependency in relation to the leader. This then laid the foundation for the work of the last day, where the group worked with envy and the more virulent levels of the competitiveness for the co-leader’s chair.

Many of us in the group were intrigued with the level of freedom members experienced to work in the large group, the relative ease of working with quite difficult issues, and most of all the amount of containment in the group. The systems-centered methods seemed to work well, using functional subgrouping to contain the large group dynamics, and modifying defenses that were phase specific so the group could resolve its conflicts as they emerged and move to the next level in its development. 

This article was published in the August/September 2000 issue of The Group Circle.