The three group ‘as ifs’

Bion postulates that the ‘need to belong’ produces an unconscious group attitude in which every member plays a part. The group can be for 30 minutes or three months. The overt purpose of the meeting may be therapy, file-keeping, a coaching workshop or a focus group – the phenomenon will be the same.

He suggested that groups behaved as if there was an unspoken assumption. Whenever the group is working it can behave as if a basic assumption is held in common by all the members and this will directly influence its activity.

This basic assumption could colour, influence and suffuse any rational work which the group attempted to do. In effect, when it regresses and resorts to these Kleinian processes, it is weakened in its ability to achieve a developmental contact with reality. The more it attempts to separate the good and bad, idealizing the good and attacking the bad, the more individuals are resorting to their earliest relationship with part objects. Emotional states of groups

The next time you conduct a group, look for the three distinct emotional states that they may display and the three basic assumptions that can, as a consequence, be deduced. Check out which of the basic assumptions will be evidenced at any one time, although they can change or persist throughout the constitution of the particular group.

Dependency

Dependency is when a group behaves as if “it met in order to be sustained by a leader on whom it depends for nourishment, material and spiritual, and protection” (Bion, 1968). Consequently its members behave as if they are inadequate and immature, knowing nothing and having nothing to contribute. Simultaneously, they act as if the leader is omnipotent and omniscient, and may idealize him/her as some sort of god.

Result: Such a group may ‘never know’ or draw in the moderator again and again, unable to discuss the subject independently. The moderator may feel ‘inflated’.

Pairing

Pairing is when a group behaves ‘as if’ the members have met so that two people can pair off and create a new and as yet unborn leader to deliver them from their anxieties and fears. Bion, again characterized this basic assumption as a defence mechanism of the group.

Result: This prevents the group from coming into contact with reality by keeping it a closed system. Instead, it uses its energy to defend itself from its own internal fears and anxieties and consequently neither develops nor achieves any effective output. This may be highly common in marketing and research groups, where, often led by two voices, hope, optimism and planning flow, often unchallenged.

Fight or flight

Fight or flight assumes that: “the group has met to fight something or to run away from it. It is prepared to do either indifferently” (Bion, 1968). If a group is preoccupied with this basic assumption, it will ignore all other activities or, failing this, attempt to suppress or run away from them.

Result: The group is often characterized by a mild paranoia. Those convened to discuss a ‘problem’ can often be characterised by this trait, as if there is only one problem and /or one solution, and the hard work of integrating the two aspects cannot be done.

So, can Bion help us today? With increasing pressure on moderators to perform in viewing facilities demonstrably mustering ‘tangible insights’ from alert and often seasoned consumers, should we, as he suggests, face up more squarely to the reality of group dynamics and their unconscious components?

It would mean flagging up ‘working with the unconscious’ to our clients and the part that our skills and credentials play in such fine interpretation. But it could also mean that professional disengagement is seen as deserving equal merit as performance and street credibility.
 

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