The Social Engagement of Social Science, a Tavistock Anthology, Volume 1: The Socio-Psychological Perspective

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 1990

The Social Engagement of Social Science, a Tavistock Anthology, Volume 1

The Socio-Psychological Perspective

Edited by: Eric Trist , Hugh Murray and Beulah Trist

https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512819748

Overview
Contents

About this book

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science."

There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the socio-technical, and the socio-ecological. These perspectives are interdependent, yet each has its own focus and is represented in a separate volume.

Volume I, The Socio-Psychological Perspective, extends the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis to group, organizational, and wider social life. This extension is related to field theory, the personality/culture approach, and open systems theory. Action-oriented papers deal with key ideas in social psychiatry, varieties of group process, new paths in family studies, the dynamics of organizational change, and the unconscious in culture and society.

The Institute's dynamic social science approach to industrial problems, which will be presented in Volume II, began with Eric Trist's coal-mining program for the development of more productive and personally satisfying self-regulating forms of work organization. The whole "Quality of Working Life" movement owes its theoretical and empirical basis to this pathfinding endeavor.

Volume III will focus on non-hierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments—the socio-ecological perspective. This perspective is offered as a guide to institution building for the future.

Author / Editor information

Eric Trist, Professor Emeritus of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, was a founding member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London, and became internationally known as the "Father" of socio-technical systems in the further development of which his Australian colleague, Fred Emery, has taken the leading role. In the late 1960s he partnered Russell Ackoff in building the Social Systems Sciences Department then at the Wharton School. He is the principal author of Organizational Choice: Capabilities of Groups at the Coal Face Under Changing Technologies. Hugh Murray is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a senior staff member at the Tavistock Institute. He began working with Trist during World War II and is a co-author of Organizational Choice.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Historical Overview The Foundation and Development of the Tavistock Institute Eric Trist and Hugh Murray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Volume I. The Socio-Psychological Perspective
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
A New Social Psychiatry: A World War II Legacy
The Transformation of Selection Procedures The War Office Selection Boards Hugh Murray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
The Discovery of the Therapeutic Community The Northfield Experiments Harold Bridger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Transitional Communities and Social Reconnection The Civil Resettlement of British Prisoners of War A.T.M. Wilson, Eric Trist and Adam Curie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
Varieties of Group Process
Bion Revisited Group Dynamics and Group Psychotherapy J.D. Sutherland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
An Educational Model for Group Dynamics The Phenomenon of an Absent Leader Eléonore Herbert and Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
Experiential Learning in Groups I The Development of the Leicester Model Eric J. Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Experiential Learning in Groups II Recent Developments in Dissemination and Application Eric J. Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
The Psycho-Dynamics of an Inter-Group Experience Gurth Higgin and Harold Bridger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Courses and Working Conferences as Transitional Learning Institutions Harold Bridger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Action Research in Minisocieties Gurth Higgin and Gunnar Hjelholt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	246
Task and Sentient Systems and Their Boundary Controls Eric J. Miller and A.K. Rice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Individual, Group and Inter-Group Processes A.K. Rice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	272
New Paths in Family Studies
The Study and Reduction of Group Tensions in the Family John Bowlby Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Non-Medical Marital Therapy The Growth of the Institute of Marital Studies Douglas Woodhouse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Conjugal Roles and Social Networks Elizabeth Bott Spillius Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323
Dual-Career Families The Evolution of a Concept Rhona Rapoport and Robert N. Rapoport Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	351
The Dynamics of Organizational Change
Working-Through Industrial Conflict The Service Department at the Glacier Metal Company Elliott Jaques Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	375
The Use of Unrecognized Cultural Mechanisms in an Expanding Machine Shop With a Contribution to the Theory of Leadership A.K. Rice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	405
On the Dynamics of Social Structure A Contribution to the Psychoanalytical Study of Social Phenomena Deriving from the Views of Melanie Klein Elliott Jaques Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	420
Social Systems as a Defense Against Anxiety An Empirical Study of the Nursing Service of a General Hospital Isabel Menzies Lyth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	439
A Psychoanalytical Perspective on Social Institutions Isabel Menzies Lyth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	463
The Assumption of Ordinariness as a Denial Mechanism Innovation and Conflict in a Coal Mine Eric Trist, Gurth Higgin, Hugh Murray and Alexander Pollock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	476
Temporary Withdrawal from Work Under Full Employment The Formation of an Absence Culture John Hill and Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	494
Freedom and Justice Within Walls The Bristol Prison Experiment and an Australian Sequel Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	511
The Unconscious in Culture and Society
Culture as a Psycho-Social Process Eric Trist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	535
Thoughts on the Meaning of the Word Democracy D.W. Winnicott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	546
Notes on the Russian National Character Henry Dicks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	558
Latent Content of Television Viewing Fred Emery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	574
Asylum and Society Elizabeth Bott Spillius Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	586
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	613
Subject Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	615
Name Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	623

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 640
Keywords: Social Science; General

eBook

Published: January 11, 2016
ISBN: 9781512819748