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The Developing Group
We (Penny Tompkins and James Lawley) established a supervision group in January 1997. In October 2001 we changed our remit to providing a regular forum for the exploration of new ideas in the field, and changed the name to The Developing Group. Our aim is to provide a setting where, within a Clean approach: leading-edge thinking can be applied in practical ways; we can go into greater depth on specific aspects related to Symbolic Modelling and other Clean approaches; and for participants to develop their modelling skills and the ability to work systemically. All the topics that have been presented at the Group are listed below.

The Developing Group is for people who use Symbolic Modelling and David Grove's Clean Language, Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge processes. It meets six times a year. Annual membership of the group is open to those who are personally recommended by a leading member of the Clean community, who have 10+ days training in Symbolic Modelling and who have maintained a fluency with Clean Language.

The Developing Group is not a training. We present a day on whatever we find interesting and worth researching. Sometimes participants don't know what the day will be about until a week beforehand when we send out an email with background 'notes'. These notes and the input from the day either form the basis for an article that is subsequenctly published or they remain 'work in progress'. The articles are already available on the site, now we intend to make most of the notes available too. Click on the links below or see the summaries following the table.

* These items are 'notes' and therefore work in progress.

YEAR DATE TOPIC
 2008  Feb 2
 "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" - In memorial to David Grove
 2007  Dec 1
Responding-in-the-Moment (with The Random Acts Theatre Company www.randomacts.freeuk.com)

Oct 6
 Directing in the Moment *

Aug 4
The Neurobiology of Space *

Jun 2
The Systemic Nature of TA Games: When Symbolic Modelling meets Transactional Analysis (with Michael Mallows)

Mar 31
'If only God would give us a sign' - The Role of Meta-Comments *
  Feb 3
Iteration, Iteration, Iteration *
2006 Dec 2
David Grove presents Emergent Knowledge (by David Grove)
  Oct 7
Modelling Conflict
  Aug 5
Using Symbolic Modelling as a Research and Interviewing Tool
  Jun 3
Thinking Networks - Part 2
  Apr 1
Becausation
  Feb 4
PPRC: Paying attention to what they're paying attention to
2005  Dec  3
When the Remedy is the Problem
  Oct 1
Learning From Relationship
  Aug 6
Clean Conversations: Remaining Clean-ish in Everyday Settings
  Jun 4
Feedback Loops
  Apr 2
When Where Matters: How psychoactive space is created & utilised 
  Feb 5
Preferences: What and How We Like
2004
Dec 4
When and How to Use 'When' and 'As'
  Sep 25
Body Awareness (with Julie Driver)
  Jul 31
Proximity and Meaning: A 'clean' approach to adjacency
  Jun 5
Thinking Networks - Part 1 *
  Apr 3
Learning to Act from What You Know to be True *
  Feb 7
Self-Deception, Self-Delusion and Self-Denial
2003 Dec 6
It's Happening Now
  Oct 4
A Developmental Perspective
  Aug 2
Levels *
  Jun 7
Multiple Perceptions, Perspectives and Perceivers
  Apr 5
Context Matters *
  Feb 1
Constructivism is Only a Construct *
2002 Dec 7
Ends and Beginnings
  Oct 5
Utilising Autogenic Metaphor
  Aug 3
Metonymy and Part-Whole Relations *
  Jun 1
Modelling Dynamic Equilibrium *
  Apr 6
Perspectives to Model By *
  Feb 16
What is Emergence? *
2001 Dec 1
A Model of Musing: The message in a metaphor
  Oct 13
Big Fish in a Small Pond: The importance of scale

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Neurobiology of Space
By James Lawley | Published August 2007
Clean Space , The Developing Group
"In all living creatures, from snails to people, knowledge of space is central to behavior.  As John O'Keefe notes, "Space plays a role in all our behaviour.  We live in it, move through it, explore it, defend it."  Space is not only a critical sense but a fascinating one because unlike other senses space is not analyzed by a specialized sensory organ.  Because we do not have a sensory organ dedicated to space, the representation of space is a quintessentially cognitive sensibility: it is the binding problem writ large. The brain must combine inputs from several different sensory modalities and then generate a complete internal representation that does not depend exclusively on any one input. How, then, is space represented?" In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, Eric R. Kandel, Norton, 2007


The Role of MetaComments
‘Meta comments’ are those verbal and nonverbal expressions which comment on what is being or has just been experienced. These ‘about-the-now’ comments can range from fully conscious and explicit to the completely unconscious and implicit. They are much more common than you might expect. Find out how to recognise and make use of them in your facilitation. 
Iteration, Iteration, Iteration
If you search for 'iteration' on the web you will find precious little outside the domain of mathematics and computing. And yet iteration is commonly seen in nature as a way for organisms to grow and develop and as a change process in an increasing number of psychotherapeutic procedures. So what is iteration and how can we make use of it? These are unpublished notes written for The Developing Group.
Paying attention to what they are paying attention to
An introduction to the Perceiver-Perceived-Relationship-Context (PPRC) model. It enables a client’s verbal and nonverbal behaviour to be used to infer how they construct their model of their world, i.e. it is a model of perception from the client’s perspective.
When 'Where' Matters: How psychoactive space is created and utilised

A joined-up model of how methodologies derived from the work of David Grove invoke the psychoactivity of spatial relations in therapeutic, as well as in other settings. Once a space becomes psychoactive a person is effectively 'living in their metaphor'. Then, when something changes in that perceptual space (often spontaneously), more of their mind-body is involved. This usually produces a more embodied and systemic change.

Proximity and Meaning

Adjacency is about 'next to-ness'.  It creates meaning in people's minds - naturally.  This article examines the significance of adjacency, how we can recognise it, and how we can work with it for ourselves and our clients, taking a 'clean' approach to adjacency.

Thinking Networks
By James Lawley | Published June 2004
The Developing Group , Work In Progress
Our aim is "To get you to think networks. It is about how networks emerge, what they look like, and how they evolve. ... Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them."
Self-Deception, Delusion and Denial
Part 1 - When we deceive, delude or deny to our self, we mislead our self, we misrepresent or disown what we know to be true, we lie to our self, we refuse to acknowledge that which we know. This article descibes how it takes multiple levels of awareness to be able to do this and gives a systemic perspective on this universal human trait.

Part 2 - And How to Act from What You Know to be True - has just been published in 'work in progress' form.

Experiential Constructivism Quotations
By James Lawley | Published February 2003
Models of Perception , The Developing Group
Extended quotations about Experiential Constructivism from Fritjof Capra, John Grinder & Richard Bandler, George Lakoff & Mark Johnson. Plus recommended reading.
What is Emergence?
The point is not to have another piece of knowledge called 'emergence'; rather it is to learn to think and operate in a new way. A way that is congruent with the subject matter: bottom-up, circular feedback loops, indirect control. While we may talk about emergence, our aim is to create conditions for you to 'think emergently'.



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Training
in the USA

in
Clean Language
and
Symbolic Modelling

with
Marian Way

in
Portland, Oregon
USA

Modules I and II
on
May 15-19 2008



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