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The purpose of this study is to explore whether a group dynamics perspective still exists in the scientific study of groups and what factors may account for the current situation.

Alongside reflections based on my professional experience, I have analyzed the main academic journals that publish group research.

A group dynamics perspective is almost totally absent in the scientific study of groups. Contributing factors to this state of affairs are disciplinary developments in psychology (e.g. individualization, experimentalization and specialization), the demise of the status of psychoanalysis, changes in the meaning and manifestation of the “group,” and effects of New Public Management.

The study offers a critical perspective on current group research practices and considers these in a larger (social and historical) context. It advocates a group dynamics perspective for the study of groups, based on systems-psychodynamic insights.

This paper aims to demonstrate the value of combining the strategic planning process with psychoanalytically informed interpretation through an exploratory case study.

The authors present their experiences and findings from a consulting engagement that began as a strategic planning assignment and soon evolved into an opportunity to explore unconscious forces inhibiting organizational change. The authors, trained in both areas, chose to infuse the two into a combined process that ultimately benefited the organization and suggested novel ways to think about the common process of strategic planning going forward.

The organization's strategic planning process was considerably enhanced, and its outcomes sustained, by illuminating the unconscious forces at work, particularly as they pertain to issues of power and authority in a male organizational culture found to have a profound negative influence upon the quality of the work environment and employee morale. Findings suggest that without a psychoanalytically informed approach, strategic planning would have failed to produce sustainable change.

While the findings reported are from a single case study, the themes explored are likely shared across multiple organizations. There is, therefore, significant potential in combining strategic planning with a psychoanalytic approach to improve organizational effectiveness and employee morale.

Although common in organizations, strategic planning is rarely augmented with psychoanalytic insights. This case study is the first of its kind to show how the two interventions may complement each other.

Art therapy has been recognized as beneficial and effective since first described by Adrian Hill in 1942. Even before this time, art therapy was utilized for moral reinforcement and psychoanalysis. Art therapy aids patients with, but not limited to, chronic illness, physical challenges, and cancer in both pediatric and adult scenarios. Although effective in patient care, the practice of art therapy is extremely underutilized, especially in suburban areas. While conducting our own study in northeastern Ohio, USA, we found that only one out of the five inpatient institutions in the suburban area of Mahoning County, Ohio, that we contacted provided continuous art therapy to it's patients. In the metropolitan area of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, only eight of the twenty-two inpatient institutions in the area provided art therapy. There could be many reasons as to why art therapy is not frequently used in these areas, and medical institutions in general. The cause of this could be the amount of research done on the practice. Although difficult to conduct formal research on such a broad field, the American Art Therapy Association has succeeded in doing such, with studies showing improvement of the patient groups emotionally and mentally in many case types.

How does the human brain absorb information and turn it into skills of its own in psychotherapy? In an attempt to answer this question, the authors will review the intricacies of processing channels in psychotherapy and propose the term transprocessing (as in transduction and processing combined) for the underlying mechanisms. Through transprocessing the brain processes multimodal memories and creates reparative solutions in the course of psychotherapy. Transprocessing is proposed as a stage-sequenced mechanism of deconstruction of engrained patterns of response. Through psychotherapy, emotional-cognitive reintegration and its consolidation is accomplished. This process is mediated by cellular and neural plasticity changes.

In the course of group analytic psychotherapy, where we discovered the power of the therapeutic effects, there occurred the need of group analytic psychotherapy researches. Psychotherapeutic work in general, and group psychotherapy in particular, are hard to measure and put into some objective frames. Researches, i. e. measuring of changes in psychotherapy is a complex task, and there are large disagreements. For a long time, the empirical-descriptive method was the only way of research in the field of group psychotherapy. Problems of researches in group psychotherapy in general, and particularly in group analytic psychotherapy can be reviewed as methodology problems at first, especially due to unrepeatability of the therapeutic process.

The basic polemics about measuring of changes in psychotherapy is based on the question whether a change is to be measured by means of open measuring of behaviour or whether it should be evaluated more finely by monitoring inner psychological dimensions. Following the therapy results up, besides providing additional information on the patient's improvement, strengthens the psychotherapist's self-respect, as well as his respectability and credibility as a scientist.

Reluctance to change therapy has clinical and economic implications. Therapists are expected to deliver treatment in a oneto-one setting ending up with patient improvement. Such an achievement is difficult to overview. There is great uncertainty as to what works in psychotherapies despite research efforts. Prolonged treatment duration with little positive effect may be caused by factors inherent in therapist and patient and the external environment. Two cases are discussed illustrating the need for better surveillance of what happens in the therapy room. Responsibility for the progress in therapy rests on the shoulders of the therapist. When therapy becomes detrimental to patient and therapist, we do not have a comprehensive system to interfere or help. Delayed recovery emanates as an increase in costs to society and the family. This is the case when return to work after treatment is partly or completely retarded.

As an exploration of how “impact” might be reconsidered, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that current contemporary understandings of “impact” fail practice and research by obscuring the space for reflexive criticality that is crucial for an individual or organisation to flourish. That it thus leads to an already predefined enculturated understanding of “impact”.

Offering some interrogation and folkloristic analogy of the meaning of “impact”, three brief expositions of differing arts-based práxes concerned mainly with reflection and connection, are then discussed through the lens of Ricœur’s et al. (1978) conflation of the hermeneutical process with phenomenology.

It is suggested that the implications of restoring, refreshing, or representing “impact” give license to a personal/professional revitalisation, and that reformulating an understanding of “impact” through re/search might offer a potential pedagogic tool, and alternative organising feature.

Through the introduction of inter-disciplinary thinking and práxes, the paper offers novel autoethnographic arts-based methods for personal, professional and organisational development and growth.

The article introduces selected theoretical approaches to time and temporality relevant to the field of library and information science, and it briefly introduces the papers gathered in this special issue. A number of issues that could potentially be followed in future research are presented.

The authors review a selection of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of time that originate in or are of particular relevance to library and information science. Four main themes are identified: (1) information as object in temporal perspectives; (2) time and information as tools of power and control; (3) time in society; and (4) experiencing and practicing time.

The paper advocates a thorough engagement with how time and temporality shape notions of information more broadly. This includes, for example, paying attention to how various dimensions of the late-modern time regime of acceleration feed into the ways in which information is operationalised, how information work is commodified, and how hierarchies of information are established; paying attention to the changing temporal dynamics that networked information systems imply for our understanding of documents or of memory institutions; or how external events such as social and natural crises quickly alter modes, speed, and forms of data production and use, in areas as diverse as information practices, policy, management, representation, and organisation, amongst others.

By foregrounding temporal perspectives in library and information science, the authors advocate dialogue with important perspectives on time that come from other fields. Rather than just including such perspectives in library and information science, however, the authors find that the focus on information and documents that the library and information science field contributes has great potential to advance the understanding of how notions and experiences of time shape late-modern societies and individuals.

Hospitals are labor intensive facilities based on highly skilled employees. A merger of hospitals is an effort to increase and rationalize this production. Decisions behind a merger are made at the top leadership level. How this might be done is demonstrated by examples from a 36 bed acute psychiatric facility. The aim of the study was to calculate the hidden costs of fragmented destruction of parts of a total hospital supply to patients after a merger. Fragmented destruction is the deliberate stopping of activities deemed not part of the core activities of the hospital without due consideration of the impact on core activities. The proposed changes to operational expenses at a single acute psychiatric hospital were materials for the study. The changes included activities as a reduction in local laboratory service, cleaning services, closure of physiotherapy unit, closing of cultural activities and reduced productivity. The selected activities are calculated as giving an imputed gain of € 630,000 as indicated by the leadership. The not calculated costs of reducing or removing the selected activities are estimated at € 1,955,640. The cost of staff disappointment after a merger is difficult to assess, but is probably higher than assumed in the present calculations.

Imputed cost containment is not attained. The calculations indicate that implemented changes may increase cost, contrary to the belief of the leadership at both the hospital level and further up in the hospital trust.

Arguments in favor of a merger have to be scrutinized thoroughly for optimistic neglect of uncalculated costs of mergers. Future hospital mergers and selected fragmentation of productive tasks at ward or hospital levels should include calculations of unavoidable costs as shown in the present paper.