Glossary of terms used

 

Alienation: refers to an individual's estrangement from one’s mileu including work, traditional community and others in general, and Self. It is considered to stem from the atomism of modern society where individuals have shallower relations with other people than they would normally. The idea of alienation remains an ambiguous concept with elusive meanings, the following variants being most common: (1) powerlessness, (2) meaninglessness or to a generalized sense of purposelessness.

 

Here and Now: This is the primary source for the data to generate hypothesis about the phenomena in the group. It includes all events like expression of feelings, evocations, pattern of conversation, gestalt of the group, etc.

 

Hypothesis: These can be offered by any participant (including the faculty) of the group and are based on the data that is generated in the here and now of the group.

 

Conjectures: Are statements by any member, including the faculty, of the group on the phenomena in the group, which are based on ‘hunches’ and speculations.

 

Sharing: These are voluntary statements made by any member of the group including the faculty about their experience(s) and the attendant feeling, meanings and choices made in the process of taking up roles in their primary or secondary systems, as well as in the Here and Now.

 

Reflecting: Is the process of publicly (in the group) examining and testing the meanings, feelings attendant to the experience(s) of taking up roles in primary and secondary systems as well as critiquing choices made on the strength of such meanings attached to the experience(s). This is the same for Here and Now work.

 

Introjection: The process where the individual replicates in himself or herself - behaviors, attributes or other fragments of the surrounding world,  specially of other individuals.

 

Socialization: Refers to the process of inheriting norms, customs, and ideologies. It may provide the individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within their own society.

 

Identity: is an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations (such as national identity and cultural identity) In Sumedhas, we treat identity as a process, to take into account the reality of diverse and ever-changing social experience, whereby identity is perceived as made up of different components that are ‘identified’ and interpreted by individuals. The construction of an individual sense of self (Who am I?) is achieved by personal choices regarding who and what to associate with. We believe that these approaches are liberating in their recognition of the role of the individual in social interaction and the construction of identity. Identity has a core that does not change easily.

 

Role: Is a set of connected behaviors, rights and obligations as conceptualized by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position.

 

Encounter: In a very specific way, it means an authentic and congruent meeting between individuals or with Self. An encounter group is a form of group psychotherapy that emerged with the popularization of humanistic psychology in the 1960s through the work of Carl Rogers. Such groups (also called "T" (training) groups and "sensitivity training" groups) explore new models of interpersonal communication and the intensification of psychological experience.

 

Self: Refers to either or both the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. Individuals explore the earliest formulation of Self, as well as explore the nature of distinction between the Self as I, the subjective knower, and the Self as Me, the object.