The Living Process Episode 25 Guest Lynn Preston A Group Listening Revolution Welcome back to The Living Process and this episode with my friend Lynn Preston. Lynn had just returned from a Psychoanalytic Self Psychology conference in Rome, having caught covid on the flight back, so you may notice that her voice is a bit husky but only her energy is infectious. In this conversation, we discussed how to translate between her very different therapeutic communities and what she values from Kohut’s psychoanalytic theories of development and the importance of empathy. Lynn mentioned a paper she wrote some time ago which attempts to bridge the different languages of Kohut and Gendlin’s understandings and it went over very well with her psychoanalytic colleagues. The link to that paper, The Edge of Awareness is below. Lynn and I spoke mostly about her Community Empowerment group work. We discussed revolutionary listening and how groups could evolve to allow us to talk about our differences. We mentioned the ‘carrying forward’ of the group process and how we know so little about this but one important principle according to Lynn is that not everyone has to agree. She suggests that we need Revolutionary Talking not just Revolutionary Listening in order to move beyond the dyad model. How can the practice of Focusing be expanded to practices of relating? How can the ‘us’ of the group make the individuals more of themselves rather than less. How can we map the challenges of group interaction in the way that in Focusing we have mapped how to work personally and as a dyad? Is mapping out the group process the next step for us in focusing? Lynn believes this is the year to bring this further development into the world. Episode 25 with Lynn Preston: https://youtu.be/tY0fRybIWcM Lynn Preston is well-known in the Self Psychology community and the Focusing Oriented Therapy community. She has spent years teaching and writing about both forms of therapy and had a long-standing friendship with Eugene Gendlin. Lynn's recent efforts have included her Community Empowerment initiative as well as spearheading the Focusing Therapy Youtube channel. Lynn's contacts: lynpres@aol.com http://www.lynnprestonforp.com The link to the paper we mention is here: The Edge of Awareness: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247527307_The_Edge_of_Awareness_Gendlin's_Contribution_to_Explorations_of_Implicit_Experience Links to all videos and podcasts: https://www.londonfocusing.com/the-living-process/ Focusing Oriented Therapies YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx3FqA70kQWuHCHmEiZnkn1VcrRIPbcvk