Paradoxes of Group Life: Understanding Conflict, Paralysis, and Movement in Group Dynamics

Locating Paradox

In the first part of this book we introduce the concept of paradox, review its role in twentieth-century thought about human behavior, and explicate a theory of group relations based on paradoxical thinking.

We start with the observation that people’s experiences in groups are filled with tensions and conflicts that are hard to manage. Yet the majority of theories about group dynamics ignore the theme of conflict entirely or deal with it in a rather superficial manner. This leads us to the question of what framework would enable the topic of conflict in groups to be productively understood. We turn to paradox as a guiding conceptualization. ...