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| Harriet W. Meek, Fred Bauder, Shannah Whitney, and Robert M. Young | |||
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The internet is a wonderful place full of information on every topic imaginable. Some people are delighted by this; others are horrified. One resource on the internet is called a mailing list. These exist in thousands of topical areas, some academic, some informational, some for support, some recreational. One subscribes and on acceptance becomes the recipient of e-mail from the list and can post messages oneself. There are lists with high traffic of 50 or 100 messages a day and others which remain inactive for months. ISPSO has a mailing list which sometimes has 10+ daily posts and sometimes is silent. Today we going to talk about a particular internet mailing list called NetDynam, which began last October. People joined NetDynam based on the following statement . . . . This is a list dedicated to an examination of online group dynamics: the purpose will be to examine the process itself of writing through listservers -- perceptions of the other participants, the dynamics of flame wars, power and persuasion, what is effective communication and why . . . .
Our presentation consists of four parts. I will begin, with an introduction to the beginning days of NetDynam, suggesting a resemblance to the early phases of any group. My talk will be followed by Fred Bauder's identification of potential objects for projection on NetDynam -- the cast of characters. Fred will be followed by Bob Young, who will give us some of his thoughts about why he has had a particular kind of experience on NetDynam. Finally, Shannah Whitney has some things to say about the list's behavior around its task. Later, we'll open the floor to questions.
Fred Bauder, our absent member, is an attorney engaged in family law who lives in Colorado. He has an uncanny ability to digest dense material and says he has been interested in psychology, especially psychoanalysis, for a long time. Early on, he did a lovely summarization of Bion-on-groups for us. We're sorry Fred couldn't be here today. It would have been fun to meet him face to face too. Shannah Whitney is a psychotherapist from right here in New York. She had a classics and literary background before entering the Yeshiva Clinical Psychology PhD program and is now at the `all-but-dissertation' stage. She frequently brings material from the "greats" to bear in our discussions as well as having a very lively imagination and wide-ranging intellect. Bob Young comes to us from London. Until fairly recently he has mostly been an inactive reader or "lurker" on NetDynam. Prior to his appearance he was also present as a sort of mythical figure because some list members were familiar with his writings, which appear elsewhere on the internet. Bob has a psychotherapy practice in London, teaches in a psychoanalytic psychotherapy training program at Sheffield, and continues to publish and to write and moderate e-mail lists. He also directs a group relations training program in Bulgaria. That leaves me. I'm now fromChicago, a psychotherapist and analytic candidate, consultant to a children's mental health agency and a teacher in psychoanalytic psychotherapy programs. I've been interested in group relations work since I was about ten, when my mother came home from a national Girl Scout training talking about her experience of these methods, though much more actively since I spent some time at the Tavistock Clinic about ten years ago. I am especially interested in the application of group relations thinking to the study of elusive clinical topics and for the support of people who are carrying out emotionally taxing work. NetDynam. . . . .Like all other groups, like no other group Harriet W. Meek, Ph.D.
One of the possibilities offered by mailing list participation is that logs are kept of all correspondence. After awhile, I began to look at this archive because I thought subtle changes in postings to the list were taking place and although I usually track such things easily, it seemed harder here. This is one way I think internet communication is different from ftf communication. Without access to nonverbal cues, it can be difficult to know what is going on affectively with the other person. With hindsight I see I was following changes in emotional tenor, that my therapist's "tuner" was operating, though more easily with the printed archives. When I began looking at archives I found some interesting things. I'm going to talk mostly about the first week's messages, though a similar analysis would be possible on the foot-and-a-half-thick-pile of NetDynam logs sitting on my desk. My method was simply to go through the printed archives, making a few notes in the margin about message content. Next, I'll review what I found and suggest some hypotheses which developed out of my exploration. Then I'll tell you in a very general way about other events on NetDynam.
At first, messages seemed exploratory, inquiring what sort of place NetDynam might be? Soon, there began an oscillation between closeness and distance, something that has continued through the life of the list. This was related to a concern over safety and comfort, what to do about aggression, and soon, a concern over boundaries and leadership.
In relation to exploration, members seemed to be wondering: What will this list be like? Do I qualify? (or, I DO qualify. . . here is how.) How will others respond to me? As people introduced themselves there seemed to be a genuine wish for others to know them, though perhaps only the part that was presented publicly. Previous net experience may have been considered an entry ticket. Almost immediately there was a sense of excitement and hopefulness as people remembered beginnings and good experiences on other lists, "What will the dialogue be like?" "Will we share similar ideas?" "Will there be a generative interaction which will help me to grow and think?" "Will I grow to care about these people and they about me?" "Will a sense of personal trust, warmth, and intimacy develop?" "Will I find my participation to be fun, exciting, interesting?" "Can I play here?" I remembered my work in a children's clinic where the ways each new child explored and made a place for themselves varied enormously, but each went through a period of "testing the waters." On NetDynam we seemed to be doing that too. At nearly the same time, concern began to creep in, as writers remembered other lists which had once been good but deteriorated over time. " Will the list grow too large?" "Will the good communication of `regulars' be disrupted by newbies?" "Will the list come to take too much time?" "Will the discussion be boring and repetitive?" "How can we control off-topic posts?" "What about personal attacks?" "Will people be able to feel mostly supported here?" "Can we learn from our experience on previous lists?" "Will I be hurt when this list ends?" There were also communications on another level, directed at research and intellectual interests. These questions seemed to contain a less revealing version of the same concerns. For instance, I thought the question, "What allows the growth of closeness, loyalty and protectiveness?" might contain a slightly disguised personal question, "What sort of experience will I have here?" OSCILLATIONS Another aspect of the beginning phase seemed to be characterized by oscillation between expression of emotion and retreat from it. After the first flurry of introductory posts, a series of tag lines appeared, carrying powerfully evocative quotations. The most intellectual messages were sometimes those which had the most "punch" in the tag line, another hint that emotion was not far away. "Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed." Law of Probable Dispersal; "If we do not attend to reality, we are not likely to perceive it." Evelyn Underhill; "On certain issues I could be wrong; but this is not one of them"; "Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas" - John Stuart Mill. Intellectually inclined messages continued to appear. A theoretical chapter was included, lists of questions to be considered. . . Because the themes are similar, I assume they serve the purpose of trying to contain the ordinary anxiety of beginnings. SAFETYAND COMFORT Midweek, concerns over "lurkers" and other disruptive influences were expressed. An assumption began to appear that the discussion would tell participants and observers how to behave. There seemed to be an unacknowledged suggestion that the expression of a wish or fear was equivalent to an order and there was some resistance to this idea. Was this the beginning of dependency group behavior? Just under the surface seemed to be the question, "Who is in charge here?" A thread having to do with what was acceptable behavior began to evolve. "Can I do what I want?" "Can I be myself here?" "I'll lurk if I please." "I hope I won't be a newbie and disrupt things." The concern next moved to a discussion of ethics and the use of the archive for research. Was this proper? What sort of consent would be needed? This seemed to be another oscillation toward concerns over dangerousness. AGGRESSION By the late in the week a series of "hellos" between members who had `met' on other lists was shared and a `cat' came out of the bag. The revelation of an unpleasant experience on another list brought the protagonist out of NetDynam's shadows. This was not acknowledged, but there was a sense of the whole group holding its breath to see what might happen next. Hints of aggressive feelings were apparent in the next set of messages, around topics as whether the group would be able to hold its own in the face of obstacles. One writer said pointedly that aggression which would not appear in ftf meetings sometimes showed up more directly in the `net setting. After this, the list seemed to retreat to a series of announcements, along with more introductory messages from new members. Many of these new people placed one foot in and one foot off the list, reserving their right to lurk. Other potential difficulties continued to be named, generally in abstract terms, eg. the difficulty of maintaining a participant-observer stance, the identification of differences between behavior on the net and in real life (ftf) interaction. Rather than a heated discussion about the obvious question, "What *did* happen on that other list, anyhow?", strong words about the advisability of studying this list as opposed to others began to be expressed. BOUNDARIES AND LEADERSHIP By Day 5, the group had become enough of an entity that effort was needed in order to gain entry from outside. Posts from the uninitiated were startlingly disruptive. Looking at one post at a time, it is difficult to know whether the new posters simply hadn't been following long enough to understand NetDynam's conventions or if their ineptness was an attribute of the particular person's character. And, the phenomena of the `gator', or a deliberately disruptive intrusive presence coming from outside, began to emerge. A discussion of message ownership, with concerns about informed consent and copyright law goes on for pages at this point, interspersed with a few new introductions. There are many long posts full of `facts', some stridently authoritarian. Two by-now-veterans seemed to be making an effort to respond to one another's words, but most messages during this period consist of individuals making their own views known. The final pages of the first week's transcript are surprisingly bland and I was bored, suggesting to me, something uncomfortable was being avoided. With hindsight it looks as if there was tension over the unacknowledged conflict between two members, apparently a fear that this conflict would harm NetDynam and its members. After working with the archive for awhile and beginning to see these patterns emerge, the work of Salzberger-Wittenberg (1981, 3-18) came to my mind. She speaks about beginnings in educational situations and lists different kinds of hopes and fears in relation to beginnings which seemed in many ways to be parallel what I was discovering on NetDynam, . . . anxieties about feeling lost; hopes and fears in relation to teacher, institution and peer group; external and internal factors which heighten stress; those at risk on the point of transition; those for whom trust in the reliability of a helping [person] has been undermined. . . ; individuals who have not been able to internalize a good enough experience; factors in the present relating to the degree of stress: space, numbers, strangeness; interaction of external and internal factors, eg. beginnings, lateness. . . By the time I'd finished looking at the first week's worth of messages, I was developing a few hypotheses:
II. It is now eight months later. Our membership has settled into a smaller group with definite subgroups of active participants and `lurkers.' There is a steady tension between those interested in "on-line group dynamics" and those interested in "group dynamics on-line", a distinction which was only clarified about six weeks ago. Some are interested in looking at all interaction on the internet; others would like to look just at NetDynam.
The most dramatic event was the suicide of the list owner in March. This was totally unexpected, beginning with the chilling announcement, "Gentle people of NetDynam," from a member who lived in the same town. After a period of shock the group began to come together, led by the new list owner, a college student ( issues of succession?). That this could happen with no prior notice is an impressive feature of internet communication. In some ways this event pulled us together. There were expressions of dismay, followed by memories of other suicides. After awhile a few people tentatively began to express their surprise at how little actual personal connection they had felt. A public day of mourning was set, during which no messages would be posted to NetDynam. We made arrangements to send a memorial and began to put together a book of poetry and other contributions offered by NetDynam members in memory of the man who died, though the book hasn't been finished yet and not everyone has kept their financial commitment. Since this event there was a period of near silence, then a period of `affinity' postings -- messages about people's lives, work . . . personal sharing. We returned to the tug of war about our task, perhaps managing to clarify some of our differences. During May a new discussion about the usefulness of basic assumption and other concepts from group relations began to emerge, this time accepted more widely than previously, though certainly with much grousing. Several things happened to allow this, I think. The former list owner was now gone. Even though he had used the language of "Tavistock" and "group relations", I don't think he really understood understand what was meant. Certainly, he consistently stopped attempts to examine motivations or statements carrying strong emotional content and other activities which generally go on in group relations work. The new list owner was supportive and not intrusive, though he knew nothing of group dynamics. And, a shift in active membership took place. Several new members joined and several old timers became silent and by early May there seemed to be more of a balance of people on the list who had some understanding of group dynamics. Another change of list ownership took place in mid-May, this time via `backchannel' e-mail, ostensibly for `good' reasons, but (with hindsight) very much an episode of `acting-out' which has been impossible to examine or remedy on the list. Two of us were asked by the listowner to take over, there was a sense of urgency and we agreed, only announcing the changeover to the list later. I, at least, `know better' than to make such decisions in a hidden way, which would suggest something of interest might turn up in the examination of this actdion. Some members were understandably peeved, but repeated suggestions from me that the list might wish to look at what happened and come up with some other solution have not been taken up by the membership. We've had some squabbles over the use of psychological jargon and some long explanations of theory which were less than useful. Periodically there have been attempts to see if we can carry on several threads of conversation at once, which we don't seem able to manage well. We talked about running something like a time limited group relations conference this summer. . . maybe within NetDynam itself, but this idea caused a near revolt from some, so this now looks doubtful. Presently some are looking at sociolinguistic approaches to the study of net dynamics and there is discussion of an interdisciplinary study. There is a tendency for an action-oriented idea to begin being defined, but then for an uproar to stop it. One way to get something done is simply to `do' it. This is probably in keeping with basic assumption functioning. There are several examples of this, but that is another paper. In many ways the patterns of behavior I have identified from the first week's logs, exploration, oscillations, concerns over safety, aggression, boundaries and leadership have continued to be repeated throughout the life of NetDynam. In all, it has been a fascinating experience. I've learned quite a lot about what might be necessary in order for group relations work to be carried out on the internet (careful attention to structure, boundaries, task). The title of my paper, NetDynam. . "Like all other groups, like no other group", still seems to fit. More than anything else I've felt delighted and gratified with all the people I've `met' through this wonderful new medium!
Bion, W.R. 1961 Experiences in Groups Tavistock Publications, London Isca Salzberger -Wittenberg, Gianna Henry & Elsie Osborne. 1981. The Emotional Experience of Learning & Teaching. Faber, UK, pp. 3-18. NetDynam FileLogs October, 1995 - May, 1996, along with telephone and private e-mail messages from NetDynam members. Harriet W. Meek, Ph.D. Suite 350, 180 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60601 312 782-0929 e-mail: hmeek@mcs.com (2488 words; 3207 total, including introduction) NetDynam: Cast of Characters Fred Bauder Hello, this paper attempts to set forth what I have observed by participating in the e-list, NetDynam, over the last 10 months. I am an attorney practicing family law in southern Colorado with an interest in psychoanalysis, but without academic credentials. I apologize for not being personally present, but it was not possible due to distance and travel cost. I take the position that participants in all activities use their internal coping mechanisms to structure their perception of external events, painting upon the external object material derived internally. I call that process here projection and hypothesize that any external object is more or less structured or defined and thus more or less available for redefinition. Although I do not discuss it here, my theoretical basis is drawn more from Karl Mannheim's theories of Sociology of Knowledge than from any psychoanalytic source. On NetDynam, and perhaps on other e-lists, the following "characters" can be observed and are available for projections thereon. A hazy, undefined character such as the administration of a listserv, for most an unknown due to little or no interaction with it , is unstructured, at one end of a continuum extending to highly structured characters who may have engaged with one in a process of dialogue with extensive feedback regarding the objective validity of projections. The "characters," of course, may play roles in typical basic assumption interactions as observed by Wilfred Bion in Experiences in Groups. For example, the group may seek to be dependent upon: The List owner, obvious, and predictably frustrating if he or she is non directive, also predictable, if the group is based on the work of Wilfred Bion as NetDynam is. However, the brief reference to the Tavistock Method in the NetDynam welcome message was no actual notice to most NetDynam subscribers. The List founder, better for projecting onto if no longer around, especially if he or she left under ambiguous circumstances as did happen on NetDynam. The e-list Charter, on NetDynam the welcome message received upon subscribing; repeated efforts have been directed at interpretation of this somewhat ambiguous document. One may look to the Theoreticians of group and individual dynamics, in the context of NetDynam, Wilfred Bion, Melanie Klein, and behind them the shadowy but never mentioned figure of Sigmund Freud. The Institutional expression of the insight of the Theoreticians, on NetDynam the institutions who actually use the Tavistock method in group work such as the A.K. Rice Institute and the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations itself. Sometimes on NetDynam we have wondered how a "consultant" as used in their workshops could function in an e-list context; whether it was possible in an e-list context to apply the "Tavistock Method" as proposed in the NetDynam charter, etc. On NetDynam some may look to that portion of the psychoanalytic community which uses or is inspired by the work of Bion and Klein. Or [may look] to participants with substantial credentials in the subject area; often displayed in a signature at the end of their postings. Or to Older subscribers who are successful in life, perhaps evidenced by their signature showing their position, as in a major corporation or academic institution. Owners of other lists...an early phase on NetDynam, a substantial portion of the initial subscribers to the list, sometimes see themselves as authorities. MUD wizards (or gods) are a special subset from an overtly hierarchical net venue. Other characters which may be seen to have power, perhaps even seen as a threat as in the case of the Nation-State are: The Listserv Administrator. The Nation-State (which might, in theory, crack down on free expression) The Host Site, either academic or commercial which may take an interest in whether the activity of the list is appropriate. The self-conscious group of actively engaged subscribers as they are seen by themselves and others as "the Group." The subscribers to an e-list, in addition to those mentioned above, vary widely in characteristics and degree and style of participation: Younger subscribers, sometimes exhibiting sophomoric enthusiasm and hyper activity. Subscribers who are new to e-lists and the internet generally, "Newbies." Old-hands who have sometimes been on the internet for many years, or perhaps only six months. Spammers, who have no interest in the topic, but subscribe and post about almost anything, but usually regarding some commercial proposition, or perhaps about some topic such as the spector of restrictive legislation which is assumed to be of general interest to all lists; a list member may sometimes post off-topic to their own list in this way. Hit and Run Posters, more common on newsgroups, who dip in and out, make a few provocative posts and then disappear, permanently, or come back intermittently. Among others who may be seen as attacking or threatening the list are Oppositional Critics who question the validity or vitality of the list, often new subscribers and often experienced or credentialed in some allied field or activity, perhaps a list owner or practitioner of some psychological discipline that is not psychoanalytically oriented. New subscribers can, in the case of an established list like NetDynam, be divided into those who are in tune with the underlying orientation of the list, analysis of e-lists in the tradition of Wilfred Bion and the Tavistock method, and those who have never heard of such things; of course, the original subscribers also fell into those categories; some became: Dissatisfied Subscribers who having read the list for a time decided it was not for them. Dissatisfied Subscribers may have posted and found no resonance within the list to their postings. Subscribers who Adjust may initially be ignorant of the underlying theory behind the list, but may research it and perhaps partially or completely adopt the orientation, as on NetDynam a subscriber might study the work of Wilfred Bion and Melanie Klein and gradually come to an understanding of that work. Some subscribers both Persist and Resist, continuing to read and post to the list while denying its underlying theoretical orientation, perhaps putting forth an alternative theoretical basis of dynamics, perhaps not, simply referring to theoretical talk as "jargon" or "psychobabble." Subscribers who write scholarly articles about the list or who make presentations regarding the list may be viewed as a threat to the flow of interaction in the group as they potentially violate subscribers' expectation of privacy, as may Lurkers, or Nominal Subscribers who may use the archives of the list (open to any subscriber) to do research, resulting again in violation of an expectation of privacy. The prospect of NetDynam postings being accessible or searchable on the World Wide Web raises similar concerns, as of a stranger reading one's mail. Subscribers may take on the following characters, among others: The Lurker, the label used generally on e-lists for subscribers who do not post, an extraordinarily rich unstructured object. Of the lurkers, some post, referring to themselves as lurkers and their posting as delurking. Occasionally a lurker, sometimes called, but only on NetDynam, a Gator, will post very aggressively, having read the list for some time and having formed a profound negative opinion of the doings of the list, proceed to lambaste the list and its usual participants. Sometimes a lurker will post when provoked, usually by some off-topic posting regarding a controversial matter such as net censorship. A special kind of lurker is the Unsubscriber, both silent and of the type who post one message, "This is no good, please unsubscribe me." Unsubscribing (and the threat of unsubscribing) is occasionally used as a tactic in struggles over list content and direction. There is a relatively small group of active posters on NetDynam, some of whom are Extremely Active, posting several hundred times a year, others who are Active, more than a hundred times a year, and some who post Occasionally or Seldom. Some active readers may Never post. An interesting term, Centurions, has been used once for the list of about a dozen subscribers who have posted more than a hundred times to NetDynam. There are subscribers who will apparently second postings based on either optimistic, cooperative, supportive, or negative sentiments expressed in the posting and who seem to ally themselves with others based on such emotional tone. On a list with esoteric content, which NetDynam is, a division can arise based on understandings and misunderstandings of that content; the use of technical terms such as baF, Basic Assumption Fight-Flight, with understanding or as jargon is the source of much action as a group of professional, semi-professional and lay people attempt to use or avoid use of the work Wilfred Bion did and wrote about in Experiences in Groups, thus a facile division of the list between: Psych types and Other participants. Fred Bauder Box 40 N ETDYNAM: Some Parameters of Virtual Reality by Robert M. Young
So why can't I individuate more than a handful of people on NetDynam, when I have been a member of that email forum for half a year, having been invited to join by Harriet Meek? I think there are three answers: lack of subject, lack of physicality and fear of engulfment. I am on fifty-five email forums and moderate two. Many are technical, to do with being a forum leader, with kinds of software, with electronic publishing. But most are based on conceptual and/or clinical domains. They have subject matter (italicise that word). In my case, that means things around psychoanalysis, groups, psychology, sexuality, on the one hand, and history, philosophy and social studies of science, on the other. I see what people think and consequently have a sense of them as individuals. Their ideas provide the core, and the ways they express themselves and conduct themselves on the forums provide the raiment, as it were. But the ideas come first. I don't think that's because I am a desiccated intellectual. Actually, to some extent the same is true when I meet people in the flesh. Until I have some sense of what they believe, I cannot firmly attach names to them unless they are very visually striking, indeed, or do something dramatic. I wonder how much this is something about me and how much it is a general feature of communication on the net. I know that there are internet bulletin boards where people interact around more or less exclusively personal matters, but I have never been drawn to them. I am writing a book about changing ideas about sexuality and joined a forum for the detailed discussion of such things, but I got off quite soon, yet I have remained on one devoted to the intellectual discussion of sexual matters. This brings me to physicality. One of my favourite books is Peter Strawson's Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959?). It is the best essay on the concept of the person in relation to the mind-body problem that I have ever read. A central point of his argument is that extension (a Cartesian abstraction from the concept of body) is metaphysically essential for individuating particulars, e.g., individual people, but more generally any particulars. He has a lovely chapter about an imaginary world based exclusively on sounds, but it turns out that you cannot isolate particulars there. My experiences with the radio and with music mean that this is not a simple truth. I would add that narrative, plot and melody are also keys to individuation. The people whom I have individuated on NetDynam are the ones whose stories have registered with me. I don't mean just biographical data. There was a period when people were putting such data on the forum. I thought it was useful, but it went right through me. What has stuck is stories, just like it was on the radio, where I also had recognisable voices. I can still hear the tremolo in Mercedes McCambridge's voice (she went on to be Luz in Giant) and the power and insinuation in Orson Welles' and the officiousness in Jack Webb's. These are individuating aspects of the physicality of sounds, but as mimics prove, they can be imitated and therefore not reliably individuated. I think physicality is mightily important to forming object relations. When it is absent, as in the novel, the author supplies it in characterization, and we see and hear the person in our mind. This is powerful and explains why the novel is more visual than the radio and the radio more than television or the cinema. I also think physicality is important in framing the boundaries of our sense of containment. Its absence, it seems to me, is perhaps the most important reason why such dramatic splits occur on the internet. People are easily idealised and easily denigrated. People are thought wonderful and fall in love and into lustful connections with great ease. People are also subjected to horrible invective, as in flaming and flame wars. Sometimes the same person gets both treatments. I have seen it often, and the rhetorics reach new highs of praise and romanticism and new depths of primitive vilification, complete with orifices and dramatic insertions at both ends of the split. A theoretical way of putting this is that with a plethora of cues, physicality militates for the depressive position, while words on screens leave out so much that they permit unconscious phantasy to run riot. Mark Slouka has commented that 'Social roles had always been bound and kept in check by the constraints and limitations of the physical world... Take away those boundaries and the ego could refract wildly and at will' (Slouka, 1995, quoted in Guardian 2, 30 Jan. 1966, p.5) He calls the net a 'strange aphysical climate' sand suggests a thesis which is worrying in the light of the growing significance of the internet: that 'morality matters only within the bounds of the physical world' (p. 2). This is part of the point of netsex and telephone sex, as well as the virtual games on MUDs and MOOs (Multi-User Domains and MUD Object-Oriented), where people play with their identities, their sexual orientations, their genders, whatever they like. Sherry Turkle has praised this form of play in her new book, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet.(1995). I think that in her zeal to see the internet as an experimental playground for postmodern ideas about identity she is being facile and insufficiently attentive of the things that go wrong with object relations, part-object relations, bizarre objects and so on. People being who they like on the net and splitting those aspects of the self off from the rest is anotherway of saying 'schizoid' and for getting people into trouble, as recent history of NetDynam has tragically shown. The founder of the forum committed suicide, and no one saw it coming. He had invested his optimistic self in the forum and completely obscured the rest, including his career crisis personal isolation and despair, from his virtual family. New technologies are available but not yet widely deployed which may change much of this for the better by adding dimensions. There is a cheap one called 'CU-see me',. I have the software but not yet the camera. Once I get it, I can see the person at the other end and hear his or her voice. I think it will make a huge difference by providing familiar dimensions and by individuating my interlocutor. We have known since Lavater, Bell and Darwin that the expression of the emotions on the face is the key to the inner world. I turn last to engulfment, which is really a subdivision of the hazards of lack of physicality. I know lots of people who won't have anything to do with the internet and think of it as a potential nightmare, with all those email messages and garish web sites crawling up their phone line and into their computer and overloading their hard discs and jumping into their eyes and down their optic nerves to fill every neurone and every millimetre of mental space with rubbish and with demands on their time and emotional resources. There is, I can attest, some truth in this, but you don't have to open email: you can file it or bin it, if your curiosity doesn't get the better of you. You can also use your software to highlight certain sorts of email, e.g., forums you value highly, personal letters, even NetDynam. However, there are less totalised forms of engulfment anxiety. If I confine my worries about engulfment to messages from NetDynam itself, I have to confess that it is, all by itself, too much for me. I don't open all the messages and don't read all of the ones I open. I play various kinds of hooky and am not a fully attentive camper. I will never be an Eagle Scout. I am too busy and have other priorities and don't want to be fully immersed in this large a family. The one I started out with was too much. The one I have off-line is more than sufficient. I have seen it said on NetDynam that I am thought of by some forum members as an absent parent. I decline the projection. The thought I am left with is that the internet poses new problems about the relationship between object relations and morality - not, perhaps, a virtual morality but a morality of the virtual, in which the absence of physicality leaves us perilously and primitively within the domain of unconscious phantasy while ostensibly belonging to groups . This is a draft of a talk, to be given, with contributions by other NetDynam subscribers, to a conference of ISPSO, The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, in New York, 14 June 1996.
Greenberg, Jay R. and Mitchell. Stephen A. (1983) Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. Slouka, Mark (1996) 'Virtual Anarchy' (edited extracts from The War of the Worlds. Abacus, 1995), Guardian 30 Jan. 1996, 2: 2-5. Strawson, Peter F. (1959) Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen. Turkle, Sherry (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. N. Y.: Simon & Schuster. Young, Robert M. (1995) 'Psychoanalysis and/of the Internet' ______ (1996) 'Primitive Processes on the Internet' Both available at home page: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N- Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html
Address for correspondence: 26 Freegrove Road, London N7 9RQ email: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk ON-LINE COMMUNITY AND CONTAINMENT Shannah Frame Whitney
Lacking the visual and auditory cues that give context to so much of the communication we depend on, the members of email lists quite understandably turn to fantasy and projection to fill the gaps. The process of distinguishing fantasy from reality in an e-mail group,is similar to the negotiations that take place in analysis between the analyst and analysand. While this approach may at times appear to deter the individual's or group's progress, it enlivens and illuminates its process. Tasks that might be relatively easy for a group of people together in a conference room, become fraught with problems and misunderstandings in this medium. Even knowing where the group begins and ends--who is in and who is out--become inordinately difficult. Progress often seems elusive, as issues recycle and repeat with changes or membership, mood, or interruptions from off list. Yet, these groups, powered by imagination and projection, can be intensive laboratories for studying the power and breadth of human interaction through language. NetDynam, in its first nine months of existence, offers a model of social construction in cyberspace. Despite many difficulties, the members have created a group that has learned to contain itself sufficiently to direct its creativity and talents toward progressing on the task with which it began. The entrance into an e-mail group is through the mission statement--the explanation of the group purpose--that every member receives as their first message from the group. Reading the mission statement forms a member's initial fantasies about the group and its task. How an entering member's fantasies mesh with the reality of what the group is doing depends on how precisely the group's task has been defined. NetDynam's Mission Statement identified two tasks: one explicit, and the other implicit. The explicit task was to study its own process so as to arrive at general principles of on-line group dynamics. The implicit task was to grow into a group that could effectively do that. It was only after approximately nine months that the members of the group began to clarify what their individual assumptions had been about the Task of the group. These assumptions fell into three categories: (1) To study on-line group dynamics; (2) To study group-dynamics on-line; and (3) To construct an on-line community. Underlying these assumptions, was the shared fantasy that the members could give birth to a group, which would in turn both contain its members and foster creative growth. Being a participant in NetDynam requires two distinct perspectives. The first is experiential and wholly subjective. The alternate perspective strives to be analytical and objective. A favorite NetDynam metaphor to capture the participant/ observer split is that of a river and the riverbank. At times one is in the stream, cast about by churning eddies of affect. At times one is on the bank watching with the calm detachment of a naturalist. The perspective can change quickly, making it difficult on occasions to remain clear about exactly which stance is which. The group has struggled with this split perspective. For many, being in the stream threatened drowning, an uncomfortable engulfment by the group, while being on the bank offered only schizoid detachment which stood in the way of fully experiencing the group. Constructing a social and psychological container that would hold both perspectives consumed much of the group's energy. The container had to be large enough to contain the psychological, sociological, linguistic and philosophical theories that the interdisciplinary membership brought from various backgrounds. Yet this container had to remain small enough to permit a sense of belonging, cooperation, toleration of differences, and interdependence. Community is such a container. Proceeding without an effective leader or any preexisting structure for task- oriented activities, the group spent months attempting to develop the cohesiveness necessary to become a group capable of even being studied. Thereafter the focus turned to task- related activities. Neither of these developments were possible until the group had become fairly able to contain itself. Until boundaries could be formed and safety insured, no effective study of the group's own processes could take place. The task of containment was complicated by the fact that the membership was committed to being an "open group," so as to include in its study the dynamics that arise when a group is "under observation," as many e-mail groups are. Thus, new members could enter and leave at will and all activities took place in front of a fair number of completely silent list members. Being at all times "under observation" was always a given in the NetDynam environment. METHODS OF CONTAINMENT The elements for containment used in NetDynam consisted of a shared language, mastery of issues, authenticity, recognition without physical cues, and management of the group's fluid boundaries. The shared language developed on NetDynam was not only a shorthand reference to historical events in the group, but served as a boundary between inside and out. Mastery permitted the group to reduce the repetitiveness that is common to all email societies so that a small change in membership did not continually force the group back to its starting point. Authenticity involved efforts by members at presenting enough of themselves to reduce the extent to which fantasy and projection had to fill the gaps. Recognition was simply learning to see and recognize other members by their textual style, and management of boundaries required, in part, an acclimation to the very public nature of list discourse. LANGUAGE AS CONTAINER As Fred Bauder, in his presentation notes, the e-mail world has its own lexicon. Within that world, particular groups develop their own peculiar dialects, which by reference to events that have occurred on the list, serve to establish a distinction between list members and others. The term "gator" which Fred mentions is peculiar to NetDynam. Using it or other pieces of NetDynam argot in a post implies an identification with the group's shared experience and history. The special language is both inclusionary and exclusionary. Knowledge of it signifies membership, while its historical references hide the meaning of messages from new members. To mitigate the exclusionary aspect of the language on NetDynam, one of the members keeps a glossary of "argot" that is commonly passed on to newbies in order to facilitate their entrance into the community. REPETITION AND MASTERY One of the common aspects of email groups is the repetition of topics and issues that makes many groups seem like a long seminar played over and over again. In NetDynam the group often exhibited a sense of derailment whenever new members joined. Whatever progress had been made stopped and the "getting to know you" phase started anew. After many attempts, the group learned skills associated with assimilating new members without deconstructing the group to do it. By using textual devices such as the glossary, the web page, the archives, backchannel conversations, and simple attention to task the group became able to maintain its boundaries and contain activity throughout membership changes. AUTHENTICITY AND RECOGNITION An importan t feature of containment in email is reduction of the extent to which members fill in the limited pictures they have of other members with projection and fantasy. Although dissociated states can serve a variety of creative purposes, some of which have been described by Sherry Turkle, group cohesion seems better served by efforts toward trust and authenticity. Putting flesh on dissociated and ephemeral aspects of one's self and others can be emotionally risky, but the reward is a fuller sense of one's identity and that of others within the group. Although NetDynam still has to deal with members who adopt a "net persona," and serious concerns can be raised about people who cannot escape such creations, time and familiarity have allowed most NetDynam members to flesh out their net presences in a manner that facilitates a realistic appraisal of their talents and a commitment to work toward group goals. One of the illusory freedoms that the Net offers is that one can be whatever and whoever they want to be with out risking rejection, censure, shame. Disembodiment promises protection. The NetDynam group learned, however, that over time members compensate for the lack of physical cues. People become familiar by how they express themselves in words. Some write in big dense chunks or blocks of text. Others write in bulleted sentences or fragments of text with open spaces in between. After a time on the list one can recognize members simply by the language, the formatting and humor they use. Serving the same purpose as visual recognition, the familiarity with textual style that occurs over time begins to contain the group without specific efforts on anyone's part to do so. MANAGEMENT OF BOUNDARIES A common complaint from those who are attempting to enter NetDynam from the outside is that the group represent a formidable and impenetrable fortress. It speaks a strange incomprehensible language, the members cannot be easily differentiated, and and the posts are mostly unintelligible. Much of this impenetrability is due to the simple fact that having self-examination as a primary activity, it is impossible to bring to the group prior knowledge of the subject matter. No matter how wide a knowledge base a new member has, the subject of NetDynam will remain foreign until the member has been at least partially assimilated into the process. Quick stance changes which make the observer into the observed, as well as the presence of openly emotive reactions to objective observations can be disturbing to newcomers used to scholarly exposition of arguments. From the outside the group seems closed and secretive. From the inside it seems out of control. Balancing these aspects by establishing boundaries within the group as well as a recognizing the porousness that reflects the public nature and the realities of e-mail, remain important goals of the group. Pursuing these goals may result, over the coming months, in important insights about e-mail culture. CONCLUSION NetDynam began with a shared fantasy that it would "someday become a viable group," Until NetDynam became a group there was no other work task for NetDynam than to study its own evolution as a group. Until only recently, it had no identity as a "group" other than that of "a group studying a group which was in the process of evolving".As we have worked toward establishing the conditions for a viable group --- containment and boundaries in particular -- we are beginning to become more vital and creative. In fact, this ISPSO panel is the first concrete task which the group has accomplished. Several other projects are now being actively developed by other group members.As more and more organizations are becoming virtual, we may benefit from looking at groups such as NetDynam, as a model of social construction in cyberspace. Fostering the development of a containing community will serve to mitigate against the boundarilessness and accompanying regressive behaviors that this medium pulls for. .... REFERENCES Davidow, William H. & Malone, Michael S. (1993) The Virtual Corporation. NY: Harper Collins Pubs. Turkle, Sherry (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. NY: Simon & Schuster. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press Young, Robert M. (1995) 'Psychoanalysis and/of the Internet (1996) _____ (1996) 'Primitive Processes on the Internet' Both available at Robert M. Young's home page: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/indes.html
________________________________________________ Shannah F. Whitney, M.A.
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