Groups are unique

A group is not just a collection of ‘egos’, in itself it creates its own behavioural and attitudinal ‘persona’. And don’t be deluded by these respondents confidently marching in to the viewing facility. Belonging to a group, be it for an hour or a lifetime, is one of the most important and complicated behaviours individuals ever perform. One reason for the runaway success of social networking groups is that they give you a sense of belonging but none of the visceral anxiety of existing cheek by jowl.

Group belonging is a way of fulfilling an ego ideal – the sense of oneself at one’s future best. Group affiliation also creates an acute anxiety of rejection and can prompt a regressive group action and a withdrawal. The current vogue for ‘process’ and ‘task’ focuses on the behavioural and rational aspects of group life, and assumes that group members are both aware of their thoughts and willing to share them. The psychoanalytic perspective shows that this definition of ‘process’ barely skims the surface. A systematic understanding of the forces that supplant the conscious processes in group functioning is required – collective projections of unconscious fantasies in which deep roles are taken by members.

The juggling act – to strike a balance between needs for independence and for belonging – is taking up a great deal of our respondents’ energies as they struggle to respond to our demands for personal revelation on brand and category, packaging or advertising.

Sessions

Conventional wisdom says that groups should take 1.5/2 hours. Yet 90 minutes may just not be enough for ‘real work’ to be done – indeed it may be just enough time to avoid it. Look at the Continent, where in France groups can last up to six hours.

How are you feeling at the end of a group?

Well, it’s nice to be asked, but, actually this is a professional question. Sometimes, even though everything’s gone well, do you find that you just don’t feel good and learnt little from the evening? It just could be that the group was ‘inauthentic’ and playing a role rather than dealing with the issues you needed to address. And you are now baring the brunt of the collective feelings.

Transference

This is about wrestling with our own relationship with the unconscious. Comfortable, in the main, with the use of projective techniques, qualitative researchers may be less happy with other aspects of depth psychology.

They may also be uncomfortable with the psychoanalytic ‘truth’ that the group is being played out in the moderator him/herself, not in what the group members are saying. It is the moderator’s minute-byminute feelings, their transference, the group members’ projections on to them (not the techniques and projective brand games that we use to distance ourselves) that will reveal the material content of the consumer’s relationship with the category and the brand.

And so, in charges Wilfrid Bion, a World War I tank commander and a psychoanalytically trained WWII advisor, much acclaimed for his ability to cut desertion and distress in the forces. What has he got to do with the battlefield that is Leeds on a wet Tuesday evening in 2008? Well, he moderated groups and came up with ‘basic ‘as if’ assumption’ thinking.

Think of the typical Irish wake – they’re acting as if they have something to celebrate, but someone’s just died. What’s going on? Or the focus group of pet food owners who never mention excreta when talking about dog food, as if this does not have any bearing on category or brand choice. Or the young focus group on vodka which acts as if they are in perpetual party mode, creatively avoiding the deeper reasons for the need for alcohol.

Bion would describe such groups as being in ‘basic assumption’ modes – in flight from reality. While this may be culturally sanctioned, in the case of the Irish wake, or socially endorsed, in the case of the pet food group, both situations would confound and frustrate a researcher trying to gain depth insight on feelings in either situation.

Groups handle emotional situations ‘as if’ something else is going on. Moderators need to gain an understanding of both the ‘as if’ and the reality. And this is not easy. The group is hypnotically seductive.