sociometry

[Adam Blatner]

I've been thinking about sociometry and it occurs to me that many exercises that are associated with this category involve little in the way of an examination of the tele factor. Rather this part of so-called sociometry really involves just the externalization of mental processes, attitudes, ideas, making them concrete. E.g., who here is from different parts of the country---let's do a local-gram.
    Or some spectrograms that have to do with low- or no- tele issues: On this side are the people who have the most experience in action methods, on that side, little or no experience.    
      These are good exercises to get people up and involved, to help people warm up, to help the group give feedback to itself. I'm not challenging the value of some of these exercise, applied judiciously. I'm just questioning whether they should be associated with sociometry per se. 

    Of course, some of these exercises can shift focus so that matters of tele or attraction-repulsion or rapport become more relevant. Then the exercises become more strongly sociometric.
       But they can also be used for issues in which the question of more or less, positive, negative, ambivalent, whatever-- tele is slight to irrelevant. 

      I felt a need to make this distinction to clarify a sector in which this has in my mind been a little muddy---and I wonder if others have experienced this slight cognitive dissonance---this "hey, is this really sociometry, assessing the tele dynamics?" hidden question in some activities that are on the surface called "sociometric," or even quasi- or near-sociometric. 

       I'm open to thoughts about this. Warmly, Adam
Adam Blatner, M.D.
   website: www.blatner.com/adam/   
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