INTRODUCTION: Computers and the human dimension

When I joined the OU in 1974, five years after it began, we used scissors to 'cut and paste' new and old course materials together. Within five years the situation changed dramatically with the arrival of the personal computer (PC).

As 'cut and paste' became a quick and easy electronic task, the human dimension began to attract more attention, especially the control of individuals over technology. Some of us believed that the quality of courses was being affected by how well teams worked together to produce courses. But in comparison to the rapid impact of technology, we did not seem to be learning as fast from relationships in groups. Technology was making a timely impact as old courses needed to be re-made.

The main frame computers operated by experts, on whom one was completely dependent, began to have a rival in the form of the PC. Implications of these developments were revealed through a small pilot project with consultants from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) funded by the Institute of Educational Technology (IET). TIHR consultants produced a report on the experiences of OU staff and this provoked considerable controversy. The report was a challenge for IET to continue consultancies from the controversial psychodynamic perspective.

There were three further applications of computers which followed the first two (main frame and PC). The third, beginning in the mid 80Us, was the devolution of financial planning which moved financial decisions from a centralized level (accountants) down to more people such as coordinators and chairs of course teams. But the complexity of the new tasks made some staff feel like they were being taken over by the system.

Electronic publishing was the fourth computer based development. Final drafts of course materials were put in a form ready for printing and distribution. These new responsibilities provoked further anxieties about working in a team and the interdependence between colleagues and teams.

The fifth development of computer technology was the Internet which also absorbed on-going work such as computer assisted learning and multimedia. From  consultancies requested by colleagues we continued to learn together and share our experiences though a variety of workshops.

In 1988 IET offered a staff workshop on group dynamics, drawing upon what we had learned up to then. Each consultancy also provides staff development as colleagues become more observant of events in team work and then enabled to contain the frustrations, anxieties and conflicts. In 1988 we were over halfway through the most active period of consultancy but we did not attempt to offer another group dynamics event. The workshop split colleagues into two groups, rather like the original TIHR report had done.

In the group dynamics workshop we attempted to duplicate some of the experiences people have in teams, drawing upon the group relations education model developed by TIHR since 1957. In going from a focus on psychodynamics within an individual to a group, size and distance can magnify anxieties as revealed by the experience of some colleagues.

Community and the Internet

A community which the Internet opens up could be simply described as a place to realize three desires:

1. To find a sense of oneself as separate and different from others

2. To have a satisfying life in groups

3. To feel safe with others in an organisation

Growing up, exploring new relationships and entering the world of work bring expectations which influence each new situation. Fears based on past experiences affect behaviour as well as influence future outcomes. Out of learning come skills in observing what we see, relating inner to outer realities, and how beliefs are changed by experiences in the world of sensation, action and consequences.

Avoiding relationships is an unlikely way to realize desires or be part of a community. Although turning away from tensions will sometime be a realistic strategy, followed excessively this will lead to a loss of clarity about one's own identify, a loss of the ability to sustain the dynamics of relating and a loss of hope about the future. Tensions are always present in relationships and experienced through frustration, anger and regret, along with many other emotions. Knowledge of a psychodynamic theory can help reflect some light on experience, our own and those of others. Exploring experiences which are 'there and now', trying to learn rather than make judgements, may raise anxieties but at least one may have the opportunity to change beliefs and possibly be seen as being honest about them. In a community one may make mistakes or express disappointment about those of others.

As our experiences of the OU community developed through internal consultancy, we addressed some deceptively simple questions - what is a team?, how does a distance learning environment affect students?, how is the work of separate teams integrated in an organisation?, which aspects of summer schools are difficult to think about?, is the idea of 'openness' used as a defense against reality?, can psychodynamics be taught at a distance?

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

When the Open University (OU) reached its tenth year (1979), consultants from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) produced a report (Lawrence, 1979) at the request of the OU Institute of Educational Technology (IET). The report is reproduced and summarized by Nicodemus (1992). Because many colleagues requested further consultancies, IET staff were able to continue the TIHR approach, as summarized by Nicodemus & Lefrere (1997)Bion's ideas about communication, containment, and emotional links helped sustain internal consultancies as they shifted focus from the centre to the periphery and from single teams to the intergroup level in the OU. Anxieties also became more focused on issues such as age, gender and generation.

A widening group of Tavistock staff continued to influence our work, especially the impact of early experience. A former Tavistock Clinic tutor, Matti Harris, wrote that children need an opportunity to (a) become acquainted with people and know oneself better, (b) feel contained and protected from aggression (internal & external) and (c) acquire knowledge and skills relevant to oneself and their culture. To Matti, education failed in containment, being able to tolerate emotions and feel them Rwithout immediately evacuating them in acts and speech.

It is in this area that the education system, both formal and informal, is probably at its most deficientS (Harris, 1987 p. 312). We will also apply these ideas to the Internet, group relations education as well as consultancy.

One further source of support are the Symingtons (1996) who describe anti-growth behaviour as expressed through hyperbole and hallucinosis e.g. exaggeration and loss of contact with reality.

BION AND CONTAINMENT

In four early publications Bion (56, 59, 62, 63) introduced three ideas which helped us sustain an 'action research' approach where the consultant becomes a participant in the dynamics as well as an observer of them. What follows here are some thoughts about OU consultancy evoked by reading Bion.

Projection as communication

Projection is a communication as well as an unloading of feelings into another person. Anxiety or pain 'evacuated' outside is a beginning of empathy driven initially by body experience. Only gradually through 'objects' is action distinguished from thought. Anxieties may be reduced through projection but so too are knowledge, skill and memory.

Hyperbole such as idealization or uncritical assertions about TopennessU, supports adherence to just the 'positive' half of a story. Denial or inhibition of TnegativeU thoughts also prevents taking a projection back inside. In accepting responsibility for how others are used or manipulated, the 'somatic' animal becomes the thinking human being through containment and linking .

About 1977 OU teams started working on the second versions of early courses.

Because mistakes just seemed to be repeated and multiplied, some of us felt trapped in a state of mind where history is forgotten. One task of IET is to support improvement of courses but some of our academic activities may seem too separate to the real needs of course teams, more parallel to than meeting them. Consequently there may be unease about isolation, lack of support or integration. The anxiety revealed by the TIHR consultants was that we may not have learned enough about relationships in a community from our first ten years.

But not everyone felt there was a problem.

Through consultancy course teams began to appreciate that some of their anxieties came from outside the team and even from outside the OU. Perhaps the main function of the uncomfortable dynamics is to facilitate integration of team members and the team into a large, complex distance teaching system. Over the years consultancies spread out into other areas, for example, the impact of summer schools on tutors as well as students and the impact of computers on work and learning.

Computers encourage a focus on interaction and collaborative learning, particularly arousal of student interest, sustaining and directing it. Questions about tutor roles, skills and training needed took us further into 'group relations education', considered under the next section.

Containment

In mental growth a container becomes less rigid and more integrated, internally and externally. But this requires tolerating persecutory and depressive anxieties which result from taking projections back inside. Only then may reparative desires lead to more integrative ideas, such as what a team is, and the possibility of creativity.

Recognition of the uncomfortable feelings and complexity of the dynamics in containment means that the two way relationship in projection becomes three-way with the addition of a third perspective, a symbol for an absent person or idea. For example, an OU residential school is the one place where central and regional staff come together with students. In this three-way relationship the space between two groups is symbolized by the intergroup level, one of the most difficult places for a consultant to be. In one example a consultant 'couple' came to be seen as the source of persecutory anxieties located in the space between the centre and periphery of the OU. Sex and gender, age and generation also became a focus of anxieties in this summer school consultancy (Nicodemus, 1985).

Gradually, as colleagues recognized the relevance of psychoanalytic ideas to work it was applied in a mathematics education course to describe relations between pupils in a class (Nicodemus, 1993). My own movement into a management position was also related to the growing recognition of the importance of containment in teams.

Emotional links

Work plans and programmed instruction can be very logical and mechanical but emotional links, values and desires, give direction to actions which lead to change and creativity. But what has been achieved can be undone by 'reversal' or rigidity of roles or relationships. For example, we offered a 'group relations' type event for a mixture of academic and administrative staff which mobilized further splitting and projection and rigidity. In another consultancy roles became very confused so that the client who had wanted help became the expert.

Computers have opened up new and more flexible opportunities to use multimedia and interactivity in teaching. Although much of this activity is based on CD-ROM, the Internet is increasingly used for interaction and collaborative learning. As aspirations rise, so too may anxieties about vulnerability of oneself and others. To measure changes such as assessment of student learning, the place of emotions may become more important e.g. conflicting desire for and resistance to knowledge.

Some IET colleagues wish to make clearer links between quantitative data collected through surveys and more qualitative interpretations about individual student learning. We may find that a psychodynamic model helps guide us in what to look for in that mass of data.

THE INTERNET

Many separate groups in the OU are involved in research and development of the Internet. Often work is pulled together in a conference paper or a book and considerable effort is made to share all this among colleagues. Course production is moving away from print, radio and TV towards multimedia e.g. using video to see each other, gaze and gesture and how they affect learning.

Dynamic use of sensory images reminds us of the central importance of 'objects' in shaping behaviour, in linking the external with our internal world. But the idea of 'virtual reality' also opens up the possibility of confusing fantasy with external physical reality.

Developing technologies increase our dependence on experts and this may evoke regressive behaviours. Drawing upon Bion's ideas (projection as communication, containment as learning and emotional links) helped evoke the following comments from colleagues:

Communications which are permanently recorded and retrievable can become very inhibiting and make finding reparative feelings difficult.

Although some students may be more comfortable with delays, others become anxious, feeling persecutory or depressive anxieties. The majority of students in a computer conference may be 'lurkers' who never interact and thus contribute to anxiety.

For some students a tutor who answers questions with too many questions of his own may seem to be standing back from the experience, avoiding getting involved in sharing feelings of which he may not even be aware.

Responses which are too structured may lack contrast with the programmed nature of distance teaching and seem 'cold'. If you are able to 'fine tune' relations with visual-body clues, inhibition may be relaxed.

When tutoring on-line, it is difficult to know who you are responsible for. People are just names and building up relationships is gradual with 'thinness and tenacity' reflecting rigid and fragmented feelings. In a highly structured course there is also a danger in Tspoon-feedingU students, not teaching critical skills.

The absence of any facial clues makes empathy difficult. Hearing a student's voice is an improvement over printed words, whether on paper or a computer screen. The video camera in TCU-SeeMeU gives the possibility of eye contact. If a person moves out of camera contact, people ask that they move back in. It is important to see a person as well as know they are there.

Conclusions

In contrast to the experience of external consultants, work Rcannot be so neatly defined and concluded for internal consultants, who remain a part of the organization to which they are consulting, potentially constrained by all the positive and negative effects of their interventions and their inability to leave the systemS. (Huffington, Cole, Brunning, 1997 p. 48) An organization may also not be very tolerant of a psychodynamic approach (Menzies Lyth, 1988) but examples described by Obholzer and Roberts (1994) could provide emotional support as well as a rigourous approach.

To link learning in psychoanalysis, groups and the Internet, a binocular vision is needed, for entering into experience and to step back from it without losing contact. In transformations there are two stages; the first where a sensation is represented to oneself in some symbolic form to think about, and the second is creating a representation which can be compared by others. i.e. From soma to psyche and individual to group.

High standards are expected at the cutting edge of research and technololgy in education. In the context of distance education, some anxieties are lowered and others exacerbated. One worry shared by many team members is a lack of commitment by colleagues and fear of failure. A team develops as anxieties are tested out and modified in the light of reality. Particular pressures are placed on those who have leadership or management responsibility. People working at the boundaries between individuals, between teams and the organisation, often become the focus of mixed feelings and may be encouraged to act anxieties out with colleagues simply because they are there.

Unwittingly a leader may organize work in a way destined to fail, a prophesy which becomes acted out because it has not found its way into words which may be shared. Colleagues who would rather not be involved with each other are not able to share their beliefs in a climate of suppressed communication. A team may become the embodiment of resistance with little mutual planning of work or assessment of achievements. Colleagues may fear being committed to work which has not been discussed. Ambitious detailed plans may disguise the fragmentation within a team or between teams in an organisation.

The Internet itself may function as a kind of trap, where people can turn away from the realities of pain, rejection or failure of career advance. Virtual (almost real) relationships mediated through a computer may encourage simplistic answers to problems, a quick cause and effect analysis which avoids the price which must be paid for learning about oneself in relation to others. Jealousy and envy may infect work and is difficult to think about or accept. Perhaps the effort needed to repair damaged relationships is less important than allowing time for events to unfold to get closer to what is true. To contain the anxieties which accompany learning is a function which communities, teams and organisations need to facilitate.

Technology may help to contain the tension between reason and the irrational as individuals become more observant, ready for difficult questions about relationships and open to discussing them.

Final reflections

During the four day Bion conference a special panel on 'BionUs legacy to groups' featured papers by consultants from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and included Gordon Lawrence, visiting professor at Cranfield University and author of the 1979 report 'The Open University'.

This paper - 'The internet and internal consultancy: Inside the OU' - was the last one presented in the special panel 'Towards the future: The internet and psychoanalysis'. Discussions focused on how the net may change our way of thinking, the role of fantasy in 'net role playing', the need to develop forms of containment in on-line groups, the visible/invisible and mental/physical in groups.

Participants were complimentary that the OU had sustained, for eighteen years, application of Bion's ideas through consultancy and staff development. Of special interest was the OU experience in teaching through the Internet and the possible relevance for training in observation and application of psychodynamic theory and skills. One conference member sent me a message saying that he had found my OU paper Rvery interesting and a reminder of your good, hard, frustrating work trying to enlighten the Open UniversityS. (27.7.97).

REFERENCES

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Bion, W.R. Attacks on linking. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1959, 40, Also in Second thoughts

Bion, W.R. Learning from experience. London: William Heinemann, Medical Books, 1962.

Bion, W.R. Elements of psycho-analysis. London: William Heinemann, Medical Books, 1963.

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Nicodemus, R. The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations Consultancy in the Open University. Report ED346 803. ERIC Clearninghouse on Higher Education. One Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. 1992.

Nicodemus, R. Transformations. For the Learning of Mathematics. 13:1, 1993,   24-27.

Nicodemus, R. and Lefrere, P. Knowledge management meets psychodynamics. In Cornell, R. & Ingram, K. (Eds.) International Survey of Distance Education and Learning: From Smoke Signals to Satellite III. International Council for Educational Media. Orlando: University of Central Florida, 32816-1250, 1997 (to order Fax 407 823 6282)

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Symington, J. & N. The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion. London: Routledge, 1996.