The Median Group

The Median Group, the term coined by Dr Patrick de Maré, provides a setting where people recognising their unique individuality can meet and talk with others. A Median Group has been meeting in Central London, with intervals, since 1997. The experience of participation has been valuable, members have learnt to talk, to know and speak their own minds.

It has been particularly useful to people who have engaged in one to one or group therapy, bringing together those who have benefited from the unique experience of psychotherapy, the Median Group can be seen as post therapy or socio-therapy.

The Median Group proceeds through dialogue, it aims at being non-hierarchical and leveling, including, promoting friendliness, thoughtfulness, the recognition of mind, minding, caring, thinking, choice and decision making and encouraging a positive re-evaluation of participants’ sense of themselves and the creation of meaning in ones life.

A feature of the Median Group is the development of a micro culture of non-possessive friendliness that is protective particularly when wider society can be experienced as defensive.

“For the spider a web, for the bird a nest, for mankind friendship” attributed to William Blake.

Through dialogue, the group becomes an instrument for thinking. It offers the possibility of thinking with others. It provides the opportunity for “outsight,” the linking of the personal with the political, the cultural (group mind) and the social. And the reassessment of the relationship of the individual to the cultural context.

The Median Group allows one to recognise family projections whereby others become idealised good objects or persecuting bad ones. The group enables our inner oppressive hierarchy to be accessed and neutralised. It acts as a catalyst for the creation of a free, non-oppressive and level social culture. In the group social assumptions, which are so assumed as to be unconscious, which nevertheless may define attitudes and inform actions, can be examined and where inappropriate dispensed with. The group is large enough (12 to 25 members) to offer a micro-cultural springboard from which the surrounding macro-cultures can be explored and assessed.

The group enables the transformation of personal frustration and outrage into psychic or thinking energy,

The Median Group was conceived by Dr Patrick de Maré as differentiating between the small group and the large group. It is a transitional group between the family (Tribe) small group, and the large group (Society). The group should have between 12 and 25 members (this number allows for all the members to have participated within a reasonable time), meeting weekly for an hour and a half with 1 or 2 convenors. There is no previously defined agenda in the Median group.

Since the beginning of human society people have been meeting in groups to communicate to each other in order to cooperate for the survival of their communities and give meaning to their lives.

Members can use the experience for both personal and professional development, membership of the Median Group can also be used for those wishing to develop new Median Groups.

Other Median and Dialogue Groups meet in the United Kingdom and United States, applying Median Group process to various situations, in industry, commerce and public services. It may be that in the future various Median Groups might come into informal contact with each other.

The group meets weekly for 1½ hours in Central London, fee of £10 weekly for a place in the group with concessions available.

Dr Patrick de Maré, F.R.C.Psy.	Professor Bohm, F.R.S.
The Median Group is inspired by the work of Dr Patrick de Maré, in particular ideas in his book "Koinonia" Karnac Books 1991, & the "Epilogue to The Large Group Revisited", Jessica Kingsley Publishers. And also "The Median Group" published in Group Analysis, SAGE Publications.	It is also influenced by the work of the late Professor David Bohm, F.R.S. in "On Dialogue" 1990, Published by David Bohm Seminars, Ojal, California.
Dr Patrick de Maré was born 1916 in London and studied at Cambridge & St George’s Hospital, becoming an army psychiatrist in 1942. During the war, he commanded an Exhaustion Centre in Normandy. At the end of the war he returned to civilian practice as a psychiatrist & was appointed Consultant Psychotherapist at St George’s Hospital. He initiated the founding of the Group Analytic Society. His publications include "Perspectives in Group Psychotherapy" & "Koinonia, From Hate, through Dialogue, to Culture in the Large Group".	Dr David Bohm was born in 1917. Robert Oppenheimer supervised his PhD. He worked on the Manhattan project & was with Albert Einstein at Princeton. He was Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of London. He published works on quantum theory and "Chance in Modern Physics" etc. He became interested in Dialogue as a route to better understanding of ourselves and society.

To join fill in the email application form,
or call Anthony Clayton on 020 7467 4549 (Answerphone).