The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.
- Frederick Buechner
We had the third session of this "Opening up" group last night. I wrote last week about the second session. There are seven of us in this group - six other participants and myself. My impression over many years of group work done in different time chunks (evenings, single days, weekends, residentials lasting several days) and in different group sizes (approximately four to forty participants) is that the larger the time chunk, the larger the group size that it's realistic to work with. I'm talking here about interactive interpersonal groups. Obviously if one is teaching skills to a structured group (especially if one limits sharing by group members), one can work effectively with much bigger numbers than this. There are also psychodynamic interpersonal groups that "work" with over a hundred participants.