A lot of psychotherapy and counselling theory talks at length about the individual, self actualisation, personal change, personal growth etc etc. Naturally all of these are vital to the person going through personal development. However it is easy to underestimate the importance of the social group.
As individuals we are fooling ourselves if we pretend we have any kind of noticeable identity in complete isolation. Although humanistic theory teaches us that we have a "core" identity, and of course psychoanalysis has alternative models, there is no real way to EXPERIENCE who we are unless we interact with some kind of environment and social group.
Eastern psychology has a different slant on this topic, in some Buddhist psychology models it is actually considered a western neurosis to believe you are an individual at all! This is an extension of the idea that in the 18th and 19th centuries western scientific thought moved further and further along the route of reductionism and positivism. What this meant in simple terms is that everything got broken down into sub parts. In science this meant the formation of psychology, philosophy, biology, theology etc as separate subjects. This is not the case in many eastern cultures where they still remain largely combined with massive overlap. It also meant that in terms of people, we were split from the macro level of society, right down to the most micro level, the individual.
In the west we love to look at the smallest possible unit, example or identifiable "thing" and this is seen a lot in our medicine where there is a bio-medical model looking at individual complaints, rather than the holistic patient as a whole. Sometimes this means that a headache will be treated with pain killers when it is actually caused by a food intolerance, trapped nerve in the back, bad posture, stress or some other deeper issue. Of course in eastern medicine there is often a consideration of the patient as a whole and balance between heat, coolness, dryness etc etc
Therefore coming back to the initial issue, the individual and their group, we see that the client or patient may well engage in personal individual change, but do so away from the reality of the group. Often this is seen where the client feels much better in the four walls of the clinical setting, but soon regresses to normal back in their real environment. Much of this is due to the lack of consideration of the need for interaction with people and environment. Clients are not separate from their social groups, families, friends, environments and cultures, in fact they are an integral part of them.
When we wish to elicit change therefore it is vital to consider how personal changes are going to impact on, and integrate with the people and environment around us. Indeed we may go further and decide that we actually want to have an impact on them i order to create social change! If a married client feels a lack of warmth and excitement in their relationship, we need to change the way the marriage works and inject some warmth back into BOTH people through dynamic change, otherwise the changes will be surface and temporary. If a person wants to be more confident at work, then we will need to modify their interactions and communications in the workplace, perhaps by making them more assertive and taking more responsibility. This of course then has an effect on the work colleagues around them.
Coming to the core "thought" then when desiring change around you. - - - Change only happens when you put energy out there!! Meditating in a bliss like state away from everything may be good for you, but if you want to change things then you need to take action, and make changes out there in real life. Put that energy out there and make positive changes!
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