Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm.

Abstract

The authors describe their experiences as members of an international online study group, initiated before the COVID-19 pandemic to read aloud and discuss Bion's (1965) Transformations. The three separately authored essays and commentary included here reflect the multifaceted phenomena in which images and voices in Zoom rectangles are transformed into shared emotional experience, the O of the group in Bion's language. These observations show how group members translate online experience into a felt sense of being with others, and suggest that oscillations in the sense of being inside or outside the group demonstrate the dialectical and constantly changing nature of the analytic field in an online group.