Making Connections > Connection Groups

Dear Colleague:

We would like to encourage you to consider starting or joining a study group (Connection Group) based on Stone Center writings. There are already several groups in various cities around the country. Most start out by reading and discussing some of the Stone Center Working Papers. The material from many Working Papers has been incorporated into several books which are now available:

> The Healing Connection: How Women Form Relationships in Therapy and in Life, by Jean Baker Miller and Irene Stiver
> Women's Growth in Diversity, edited by Judith Jordan
Women's Growth in Connection, by Judith Jordan, Alexandra Kaplan, Jean Baker Miller, Irene Stiver, and Janet Surrey
> How Connections Heal: Stories from Relational-Cultural Therapy, edited by Maureen Walker and Wendy Rosen
> The Complexity of Connection edited by Judith Jordan, Maureen Walker, and Linda Hartling.

All books contain the basic core papers. Of course, it is best for members of the group to decide which papers they would like, but some have found that papers 2, 12, 13, 16, 23, 33, 48, 52, 62, and 85 are some of the good papers for starters--others can be added.

I believe it is very good to urge group members to discuss the ideas critically along with their disagreements with them. It is also very good to bring clinical issues into the discussion, to test them against the ideas--or other practical applications of the ideas if the group members are not clinicians.

After a period of such discussions, the group may want to branch out in other directions. Some groups have worked on developing their own extensions or applications of the ideas. They've done this in various ways: sometimes individual members have written or presented their thoughts and the group has responded to them; sometimes two or more members of the group have worked on projects together and the rest of the group has discussed them, etc.

If you join or start a group, please let us know how it goes. I hope that these groups are very enriching for you and the other group members--and again, do keep in touch.

Sincerely yours,


Jean Baker Miller, M.D.
Director