Goodbye group, we hardly knew ya

We do have one more class tomorrow, but today was the last meeting of my T-Group that has been part of the intensive three-week Group Dynamics class I have been taking at NYU. Over the nine meetings we had, I felt I was starting to get to know my group members, and I was a bit sad to see it come to an end. It was a very different experience than most the groups (we usually call them IPR, or interpersonal relations, seminars) I have been a part of in CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education).

The most salient difference was that there was a very specific primary goal for the group of using it to learnabout group dynamics (while that's certainly one goal for IPR in CPE, I, at least, have never witnessed a supervisor making it explicitly the main focus for IPR).

Another big difference is that the class was split into two groups. One would meet for an hour while the rest of the class observed, and then vice versa for another hour. I've never heard about anybody doing anything like that in a CPE program, but I can say it's an approach that has some merits. I certainly learned much from the experience of observing the other group, and then writing process reports about what I had observed and about how the theory we have been studying contributed to my observations.

I have a lot of reflecting to do about what I've really learned over these three weeks, but I'm sure that my practice as a facilitator of IPR groups will benefit from it. I'm grateful to my fellow students for sharing with me and for the professor's leadership.

The mystery of groups (in chaplaincy training)

A funny thing about Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE): almost every CPE program has a "group" component -- usually called IPR, for Interpersonal Relations Seminar -- yet nowhere in the (ACPE) standards is a specific rationale given for this. Nor is an IPR even required as part of a unit of CPE under the written standards. It's almost as though the importance of an IPR is just supposed to be "understood."

Yet, I think it's anything but obvious why chaplains, or other pastoral caregivers like clergy, need an IPR as a required part of their training. After all, IPRs are not based on anything rooted in religious or spiritual traditions. Rather, the theories underpinning most applications of IPR come from the secular field of group therapy. The names providing the theoretical underpinnings for most IRPs come from among the giants of group therapy -- Agazarian, Bion and Yalom. Why do these names stand beside those of Moses and Abraham in clergy training? Surely, a less mysterious reason than -- well, every CPE program has an IPR -- has be be given.

I hope to gain greater clarity about these issues in the coming weeks while I take an intensive three-week class at NYU in Group Dynamics. While the professor does not have to answer the question of why there are IPRs in CPE -- this class is a required class for students in counseling who may very well be called upon to lead group psychotherapy sessions themselves -- I will have this question on my mind throughout the course.

This, of course, is not the first time I have sought to address the question of why IPRs are in CPE -- every

time I run a CPE unit myself I have to explain it to my students (the slide presentation to the left is something I use for that; more thoughts on groups here). But I am grateful to have a chance for a fresh look at this question.

Up until this time I have had an "it's all about the group" approach to CPE. That is, I haven't really thought of IPR as being a very distinct part of the CPE curriculum. The entire curriculum is a group experience in my view and all the theories we have about how groups behave and develop apply to the entire program, not just to the hour or two a week of an IPR (which, I prefer to call "Open Agenda" as my first CPE supervisor did).

Today, in the first session of my NYU class, as I watched the professor work, it occurred to me that it is possible to think of IPR in a very different and more focused way than I had before -- as a distinct part of the program where the goal is to teach students enough about group process and theory that they might develop the skills to be able to run group therapy-like groups themselves.

Such a more focused approach -- one that is specific about using the IPR group as a tool for learning the dynamics of groups (as my NYU professor asks us to engage in group-therapy-like experiences together to become our own "laboratory" for the purpose of learning group dynamics) -- might make sense especially in a first unit of CPE: the standards for Level I CPE include as an outcome that students will after the unit be able to "recognize relational dynamics within group contexts." (Standard 311.5)

My own spiritual development has not involved much of group-therapy-like groups (with the exception of a few tricks I've learned from Parker Palmer). But I know that, for example, some -- like Philadelphia rabbi Ira Stone and other organizations -- have adapted the 19th century Mussar tradition, to set up modern groups -- each called a vaad/וועד -- to, in the words of Stone's web site become a "community of learners dedicated to transforming themselves, their relationships, and

their institutions by fully integrating the values of Mussar into daily practice and daily life." Each vaad typically meets on a regular basis in a way similar to group therapy groups meet regularly -- although the focus of a vaad has a clear spiritual overlay.

Both of the books assigned for my current class are ones I already own -- a huge classic text by Yalom (the "bible of group therapy" according to my professor) and a more approachable how-to-style book called Groups: proc

ess and practice. Our professor has asked us to read the first couple of chapters of this book for tomorrow's class. Here are some of

the discussion questions she gave us for our reading:

Chapter 1

1. Why do we use groups for counseling purposes? Can you distinguish between counseling in groups and doing group counseling?

2. What is the difference between group process and techniques?

3. Why is a theory about groups necessary for working with groups?

4. What are the four different kinds of groups discussed in this chapter. Please be prepared to give examples of these kinds of groups – from your own experience or from other's experience.

5. Regarding multiculturalism in group work – what is the definition of culture? How is culture likely to be relevant in groups?

Chapter 2

1. What are you thoughts about the list of personal characteristics of the effective group leader listed on pages 30-38?

2. Which of the group leadership skills presented on pages 38-46 seem most important to you and why?

Chapter 4

1. Please be prepared to describe the process of forming a group described in this chapter. What do you think about it? Any issues left out? What are likely to be the hardest struggles in forming a group? Any ideas about how to respond to these struggles?

I look forward to learning more about group theory in the coming weeks, and to having more opportunity to reflect on my own group practice. I doubt I will abandon my "it's all about the group" approach. But I may come to a different understanding about how to run the IPR/Open Agenda portion of my programs. And I hope to be able to become more clear in explaining to my students why we have an Open Agenda portion of a CPE program. It's just not good enough to just leave it a "mystery."

It's about the grief, stupid

Congregational life can be fraught with problems. Factions form and feud. Some people like the clergy person and other people sharply criticize him or her. People become wounded and angry. Sometimes they leave the congregation.

All this can drive the clergy person nuts. He or she ends up running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off, desperately trying to put out fires here and there by trying to appease this person or that person. He or she starts to suspect that maybe some of the congregants are a bit crazy. Clergy "burn out" soon follows.

But there's another way. It comes from recognizing that the fights and complaints aren't always really about what they seem on the surface. It comes from looking at things with a pastoral eye -- with the eye of a spiritual caregiver -- and seeing that many times people are expressing grief. Grief does not just come from death. We grieve about many things, about losses of all kinds. Congregations experience many losses, especially if they find themselves shrinking, as many older congregations do. Programs close. Beloved staff leave. Individuals suffer losses in their own lives that they feel were not addressed by the clergy person. Unresolved grief accumulates. Anger lies not far behind.

I was reminded of all this yesterday when one of the alums of our chaplaincy education program here came to speak to our summer chaplaincy students about how she uses her clinical pastoral education (CPE) experience in the congregational setting. She said that being able to recognize grief as the real problem is extremely helpful for her. Once she recognize it, she can address it in the ways she learned to address the grief of patients and families in the hospital. She can work with folks to help them name their grief. She can help them to feel heard and listened to -- to feel cared for. And, almost like magic, the conflicts and anger often just melt away.

She also reminded me of how relevant the education we do here is to the work clergy will be doing in their congregations. Sometimes our students complain about how transitory their contacts are with the folks they minister to. At our hospital, we send a chaplain to every death to offer support to the family. Often this is the very first (and last) time the chaplain will meet these people. The chaplain will often come back to his or her colleagues an complain -- "if only this was the congregational setting! Then I would have a relationship with the people first."

But our speaker reminded us that the reality for the congregational clergy person is often that they will have had little or no contact with a family before a death. There will be one meeting with the family before the funeral and then the funeral itself. Our speaker said having had the experience with those kind of "blind dates" with people in mourning in our hospital prepared her well for this kind of experience around funerals.

Other basic pastoral skills that we work on in CPE were also helpful to her in her congregational work -- developing a listening presence and developing an understanding of how people function in groups (group dynamics).

The other big thing she emphasized was the importance of getting honest feedback from peers, another big thing we work on in CPE. This is especially true when you are having difficulty with congregants or board members. Sometimes when we complain to our peers about this what we get back is something to the effect of, "poor, dear, your congregants really do seem a bit difficult. That must be hard for you."

Well, that might help you feel better in the moment, but it's not really helpful in the long run. What's helpful is honest feedback that helps you understand things like the group dynamics and even where your actions have contributed to the problem. With that in hand, you can actually go on to heal the wounds . . . . . . from grief and otherwise.

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By the way, the title of this blog post is a reference to "It's the economy, stupid" from Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush.

"Twice taught" -- me and groups in CPE

One of the challenging things on the path to becoming a certified trainer/supervisor of chaplains and other spiritual caregivers is that you need to do a lot of "book learning", but few training programs have classes on the things you need to learn. That means you have to do a lot of studying on your own.

For me, the best way to do this learning is to be what one of my old students called "twice taught". That is, in order to learn it for myself what I really need to do is teach it to others. Today, I did that with the theory of groups in our field of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE).

I used Google Docs to put together my presentation (below). It was mostly a discussion and part of it was very specific to the residency group I was teaching, but it might nonetheless be useful to some. I'm happy to share it!