TranslateJoin ISPSO & TYNC for it’s Northeast North America, in-person, event
Saturday October 24, 2026 @ 9am-4pm
The William Alanson White Institute
20 West 74th Street, New York, NY
Organizations are continually asked to do two seemingly contradictory things:
Provide enough structure for people to feel secure while remaining flexible enough to adapt, learn, and transform. Too much structure can stifle learning; too little can leave people feeling overwhelmed and fragmented. How can organizations create scaffolds that support both stability and change? To provide enough structure for people to feel secure, while remaining flexible enough to adapt, learn, and transform.
Questions We Will Explore
- What makes a container strong enough to welcome difference?
- How do we remain thoughtful, ethical, and adaptive while holding organizational structure during times of uncertainty?
- How much instability can a system tolerate before it fragments?
- When do organizational scaffolds become protective—and when do they become cages?
- What happens when there is no scaffold at all?
PROGRAM SEQUENCE
| TIME | PROGRAM | FOCUS / PURPOSE |
| 8:30- 9:00 | Arrival, Registration & Light Breakfast |
Participants arrive, check in, and begin connecting informally |
| 9:00-9:05 | Welcome & Framing: The Scaffold and the Storm |
Welcome from ISPSO/TNYC representatives and introduction to the central inquiry of the day: How do organizations provide sufficient structure and containment while remaining open to uncertainty, difference, learning, and transformation? Brief orientation to the day's experiential and psychoanalytic approach. |
| 9:05-10:20 | Social Dreaming Matrix |
Participants share dreams and freely associate to their content, allowing collective themes, anxieties, hopes, defenses, and unconscious dynamics to emerge. The Matrix creates an opportunity to attend to what may be operating beneath the surface of contemporary organizational life. |
| 10:20-10:30 | Break | |
| 10:30-10:40 | Intro to Improvisational Exploration: Structure, Uncertainty & Emergence | What are we not here to do: To try to be funny, to train to become actors and/or comedians. Improv rules and tenets. |
| 10:40-11:15 | Improvisational Exploration: Structure, Uncertainty & Emergence |
An experiential exploration of what happens when individuals and groups encounter uncertainty within a defined structure. Participants will have opportunities to notice responses to spontaneity, authority, dependence, control, collaboration, risk, and the unexpected—and consider their parallels in organizational life. Victoria Te You Moore, LCPC (IL), LMHC (NY), Bio below |
| 11:15-11:50 | Making Sense of the Morning | Victoria Te You Moore |
| 11:50 AM-12:00 PM | Break | |
| 12:00 – 12:35 PM | Case Consultation | The Scaffold and the Storm in Practice Ramya Kumar, PhD, Bio below |
| 12:35-1:35 PM | Lunch | Lunch and informal conversation. |
| 1:35-2:15 PM | Improv Exploration |
Facilitated psychoanalytic framing connecting Social Dreaming and Improvisation to the Conference theme. Participants consider what the morning revealed about containment, anxiety, authority, defenses, belonging, uncertainty, creativity, and change. This session creates the conceptual bridge into the afternoon case work. |
| 2:15-2:55 PM | The Scaffold and the Storm in Practice: Organizational Case Consultation |
Participants work in facilitated small groups with organizational cases involving change, instability, conflict, leadership, authority, inclusion, or uncertainty. Groups apply psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, group relations, and systems perspectives to identify underlying dynamics and possible interventions. |
| 2:55-3:10 PM |
Break |
|
| 3:10-3:45 PM | Learning & Whole-Group Integration | Groups reconvene to identify themes, insights, differences, and questions emerging from the cases. Particular attention is given to how practitioners determine when structure is containing and enabling—and when it becomes rigid, defensive, or insufficient. Victoria Te You Moore |
| 3:45-4:00 PM | Closing Plenary: What Will We Carry Forward? | Collective reflection on the day's experience and learning. Participants identify implications for their own leadership, clinical, consulting, coaching, or organizational practice. |
| 4:00-5:00 PM | Reception | Refreshments, networking, and continued conversation. |
REGISTRATION
Register here (registration and payment)
CE Credits will be available.
For questions, please contact Committee Chair Joanne Bowman jrosebowman@gmail.com
FACILITATOR BIOS
Victoria Te You Moore, LCPC (IL), LMHC (NY) is a multilingual psychotherapist and artist in private practice. She is passionate about group dynamics and improvisation and has developed and facilitated experiential trainings integrating the two for various universities, the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, the American Group Psychotherapy Association, the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and the government of Hamamatsu (Japan). She is a Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and the outgoing Vice President of the Board of Directors of Clowns Without Borders USA.
Ramya Kumar, PhD, MSOD, is a global award-winning organizational psychologist, organizational development professional, and executive coach with over 20 years of cross-industry experience as a strategic partner and consultant in leadership roles with global and Fortune 500 organizations. Ramya currently serves as the Associate Director of the Executive Master’s Program in Change Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. Additionally, Ramya is an adjunct in the S-OP Master’s program and the Executive Master’s program in Change Leadership at TC, and Affiliated Faculty in the Organizational Dynamics Program at Univ. of Pennsylvania. She has a private practice providing consulting and coaching to clients in the areas of OD, change, and executive leadership development.
SOCIAL DREAMING HOSTS BIOS
Martin Walker
As an Interpersonal psychoanalyst and organizational consultant, Martin Walker has worked with individuals, families and larger systems. Bilingual (English/Spanish), he has lived on four continents and worked extensively with trauma and underserved communities. Lifelong contemplative practice and Yoga Alliance certification has led him to approach both psychoanalytic and organizational practices with body/mind perspectives. Partnering with Gordon Lawrence, he helped form the hosting practice of social dreaming. He has presented on it at conferences, including ISPSO’s, and is currently board member of the Centre for Social Dreaming as well as founding participant of the New York Center for the Study of Groups, Organizations, and Social Systems’ social dreaming hosting team.
Mette Buchman
An Organizational Psychologist, Mette Charis Buchman takes a systems-psychodynamic approach to team dynamics and organizational life in her consulting and coaching work. Mette's practice integrates creative methods to surface the unconscious, fostering spaces for deep reflection, sense-making, and collaboration. This includes Social Dreaming. Mette's academic background includes master’s degrees in Organizational Psychology, Women’s Studies, and Film & Media Theory, alongside accredited training in coaching, leadership, system-psychodynamic practice, and action research methodologies. She is currently a PhD Candidate. She frequently serves as staff member at Group Relations Conferences. Mette is an active member of the New York Center for the Study of Groups, Organizations, and Social Systems, where she co-host the online monthly Social Dreaming Matrix. She is also a member of the International Social Dreaming Network, A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems and at the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO).
Patricia Kummel
Patricia Kummel, JD, PhD, Private Practice for Psychotherapy and Organizational Consultation, New York City; Consultant, CHE Psychological Services; Fellow, Co-Chair of Change Committee and Past Chair of Training and Certification Committee, A. K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems; Member, New York Center for the Study of Groups, Organizations and Social Systems and Washington-Baltimore Center for the Study of Group Relations; Co-Creator, GRI International, American Psychological Association; Retired Member, California, Washington D.C. and New York Bars.
CORE PLANNING COMMITTEE
Joanne Bowman, Chair
Patricia Kummel
Aaron Nurick
Mette Charis Buchman