A Special Set of Conceptual Tools to Bring about Change in Groups

The Wilfred Bion’s theory of groups

Beneath the surface

As soon as we enter a group, any kind of group, we are affected by the unconscious functioning pertaining to human beings in groups.

Some groups thrive and some never reach their destination, and get lost in limbo — groups’ members rationalize what happened and find explanations to make sense about why they did not succeed, identify some scapegoats, and move on, focusing on the problems they know how to solve, rather than the problems they actually have (Borwick, 2006).

How can we deepen our understanding of how organizations, teams and groups work? How can we help groups and their leaders better cope with the threat of distracting phenomena?

As leaders become aware that it is not only the observable (overt, conscious and rational) but also the hidden underlying (covert, unconscious and irrational) personal and institutional elements that stall and sabotage growth and advancements (Obholzer, 2006), they begin to acknowledge the need to better understand themselves and their context by examining the behavior of their organization “beneath the surface”.

As they recognize the importance and usefulness of taking into consideration organizational change dynamics to improve their decision-making, Bion’s psychodynamic considerations offer unique insights to clear a path against deeply ingrained resistances, to succeed, and to become better at tolerating change and development.

As organizational psychologists, independent of whether we work with one person or a team, our coaching interventions always take place in a systemic context where individuals work together to achieve the overall organizational purpose and goal. Equipped with Bion’s “maps and lenses”, we can more accurately focus on emotions and relationships to support leaders and their teams face organizational challenges (Nagel, 2019).

Bion’s work Experiences in groups (1961) constitutes a milestone in the understanding of the unconscious functioning of human beings in groups. It has helped to further the understanding of group, organizational and societal dynamics, and has largely contributed to the development of systemic and management theories.

In Experiences in groups, Bion develops a theoretical framework of group functioning comprising two different mental states: the basic-assumption mentality and the work-group mentality. These two terms relate to two fundamental ways of perceiving and thinking, and determine the ability of the members to relate to each other in the context of the purpose for which the group has come together (the primary group’s task).

The basic-assumption mentality

The basic-assumption mentality describes the status of a group all wrapped up in its own emotions: anxiety, fear, hatred, love, hope, anger, guilt, depression (Bion, 1961, p. 166); the outcome in case of prevalence of this kind of mentality is constituted by losing contact with the aim for which the group has met, collapsing into a collusive process of stagnation (Bion, 1961, p. 128).

Bion stressed three different types of group configurations belonging to this latter type of mentality and emerging from the proto-mental dimension: the baD (basic assumption of Dependence), baP (basic assumption of Pairing), and the baF (basic assumption of flight–fight) (de Felice & al., 2019).

This is what could happen when work groups fall into one or more of the three different emotional states in which basic-assumption groups exist:

Dependency: In this state, the group seeks a leader who will relieve them of all anxiety. This leader is thus invested with omnipotence and is expected to be able to solve all problems. If this magical leader does not perform up to scratch, then the leader will be attacked and a replacement sought. Thus a cycle of leader-seeking, idealization and denigration occurs.

Pairing: The development of the group is frozen by a hope of being rescued by two members who will pair off and somehow create an unborn leader. Bion related pairing to the Oedipal stage and the importance of the family group. Early group setting are familial or kinship and these are used as later templates for group activity, and early anxieties may reappear.

Fight/flight: The group acts as if its main task is to fight or flee from some common enemy who may be found either within or outside the group.

Switching between states: The group may switch between these three states, sometimes very quickly, or may become stuck in one mode.

“Oneness”: Turquet (1974) added a fourth basic assumption of “oneness”, echoing neonatal unity, where: “…members seek to join in a powerful union with an omnipotent force, unobtainably high, to surrender themselves for passive participation and thereby to feel existence, well-being and wholeness.”

The work-group mentality

Work-group mentality, on the other hand, describes the dynamics of a group (or the facets of mental activity in a group) that is focused on completing its primary task, while at the same time consciously and effectively dealing with the emotions that arise within and from this process.

As such, work-group mentality is concerned with two dimensions of reality: the reality of action (translation of thought into action), rooted in a realistic awareness of time, and the psychic reality of group life, emotional truth (the psychic reality of the task and the reality of other people) (French & Simpson, 2010, p. 1866–1867).

The outcome when a certain prevalence of this kind of mentality occurs is constituted by the “capacity for realistic hard work” (Bion, 1961, p. 157).

“Work-group mentality tests itself against truth — or against reality — even if this implies postponing pleasure and accepting pain” (French & Simpson, 2010, p. 1866), something basic-assumption mentality resists against, deeply resistant to new thinking, unable to tolerate development, “rooted precisely in resistance to development.” (Ibid, p. 1866 and 1867)

To be able to embrace work-group mentality, to confront factual and emotional reality, to tolerate shared tensions, anxieties and frustrations in order to achieve the shared objectives linked to the primary task of the group, could be considered an important aspect of effective leadership (Nagel, 2019).

The risks to get stuck in basic-assumption mentality

To confront emotional states, and to seek to identify blind spots, defensive reactions, distorted thinking and irrational behaviors to transform experiences in which basic-assumption groups exist is not a safe endeavor. It is a dangerous act, since “anyone who manages to spot the pattern of avoidance, and then dares to challenge the assumption, is likely either to be attacked or simply ignored.” (French & Simpson, 2010, p. 1863)

When members of a group are dominated by basic-assumption mentality, it is unlikely that they realize and recognize that they have shifted attention “off-purpose”, and they may even think that the work atmosphere has improved. Often, for group’s members, hardly anything has changed at all. The adoption of the “anti-purpose” has been tacit and adopted unconsciously, “the group as a whole remain[ing] unaware of the emotional state being avoided.” (Ibid, p. 1863)

We can spot work-group mentality, when “a group works sufficiently well to be able to manage both its tasks and its own dynamics and relationships, internal and external” (Ibid, p. 1862), and we can indirectly suspect that basic-assumption mentality is ruling when individuals start to complain that they “cannot think” anymore (Bion, 1961, p. 95), feel some lack of purpose and loss of vitality (Ibid, p. 1868).

Although originally intended to mitigate emotional threats, basic assumptions can over time become dysfunctional and bureaucratic, since they do not reduce anxiety, but also tend to replace compassion, empathy, awareness and meaning with control and impersonality. As a consequence, the perception of reality becomes distorted and decision-making impaired (Kets de Vries, 2004, as cited in Nagel, 2019).

Basic-assumption mentality may indeed help the group deal with “problematic feelings of hatred, destructiveness and even despair, but it is unconsciously designed not to address, but to distract from or avoid, both these feelings and the shared purpose that helped to stimulate them” (French & Simpson, 2010, p. 1969).

Basic-assumption mentality leads to behavior, to activity, but without reflexivity, which is “different in kind to reality-oriented work-group functioning, where action is dependent on thought and thought on action.” (Ibid, p. 1868)

There is always a risk for any group to lose touch with its purpose, to get stuck and to stagnate in the basic-assumption mentality, when “group members devote their energies to various forms of dispersal” (Ibid., p. 1962), their mental activity becoming “stabilized” on a level that is platitudinous and dogmatic (Ibid, p. 1867).

The intervention

Refering to Bion’s terminology, we can foster and assist work-group activity, by helping group’s members cope with strong emotions and unconscious motivations, for them to be able to contain better emotional tensions, conscious and unconscious (Ibid, p. 1865), and as such help them catalyze the emergence of productive forms of interactions within the organization; “the resulting outcomes are insight, understanding, learning, growth and development.” (Ibid, p. 1867)

Individuals begin to change the way they look at themselves, their role, their group, their organization, the system and ultimately, even the world. In changing the way of looking at the world, they change the way of being in the world — the cultures they create, the way they connect and relate with others, the decisions they make, and ultimately, the way they embrace leadership and impact others and their environment.

However complex Bion’s considerations on group phenomena may be, they are based on a relatively simple observation: some groups work and some do not. Or, more accurately perhaps, no groups work to optimum effectiveness all of the time (there is indeed no work-group that ever meets “for a specific task” without some kind of basic assumptions), but neither is any group entirely dysfunctional.” (Ibid, p. 1862 and 1864)

Sometimes, basic-assumption mentality can even “assist” or “further” work-group mentality (Ibid, p. 1864). It’s never stable, let alone permanent, a group’s emotional life being always on the move. Work-group mentality and basic-assumption mentality are “always in interplay” (Ibid, p. 1864), there are always the two opposed tendencies, “the development push” and the “regressive pull” that have to be negotiated consciously and unconsciously (Ibid, p. 1867).

When working with and coaching a group, even if we are not directly involved in the “play”, we have to remember that we are not exempt to fall into basic-assumption mentality ourselves, especially dependence toward the senior executives we interact with. Does our dependence lead to stagnation or platitudinous (in conflict with the organization’s purpose) or is it in the service of the organization, to become work-group dependence (Ibid, p. 1868)?

When we intervene in an organization, we are also at risk to fall into pairing, a basic-assumption mentality characterized by “an air of hopeful expectation” for a longed-for “Messiah” (Bion, 1961, p. 151 and 152), a hope inevitably leading to disappointment. Once again, however, pairing may sometimes make a significant contribution to the organization’s purpose, “so that the hopeful expectation generated by the pair [is] translated into action by realistic hard work” (French & Simpson, 2010, p. 1869); that’s when pairing fosters “good interpersonal chemistry” and “intellectual understanding”, mobilized not for personal advantage or pleasure, but “in the service of the mission.” (Ibid, p. 1869) Hopefully pairing would then be successfully turned into a work-group state, where pairing helps face the truth in a way that grounds in reality the expectation of group members, where each other’s areas of expertise, trusting each other and speaking frankly to one another are valued, and where new ways of thinking, relating and acting together can emerge (Ibid, p. 1869).

To help leaders foster a work-group mentality and to support work-group functioning in the organization, we do our best to “focus on a form of interaction that is different to the dominant basic-assumption” (Ibid, p. 1871) and in which the group or the organization addressed is caught. For example, a group that is caught up in basic-assumption fight-flight would call for an intervention that evokes or supports dependence or pairing, to calm and “contain” the emotions of the group (and at the same time to challenge the group). Acting in such a way, we bring balance and hope “to reduce the hold of the emotions underpinning the basic-assumption fight-flight response, allowing some of the energy from an inoperative basic-assumption to be mobilized.” (Ibid., p. 1871) Shifting the form of interaction, we provide as much as possible a context in which thinking and development become possible and where the truth/reality of the situation can be accepted, and the challenges of collaboration can be worked with (Ibid., p. 1872 and 1873).
Hopefully, group’s members will recover their capacity to think and some vitality, to face struggles and anxieties, to exist in context, to feel existence, and to do what they are here to do together.

“But this is human life: the war, the deeds,
The disappointment, the anxiety,
Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh,
All human; bearing in themselves this good,
That they are still the air, the subtle food,
To make us feel existence.”
- John Keats, Endymion, 1818


References
Bion, W.R. (1961). Experiences in Groups. London: Tavistock.
Borwick, I. (2006). Organisational role analysis: Managing strategic change in business. In J. Newton, S. Long & B. Sievers (Eds.), Coaching in depth: The organisational role analysis approach. London: Karnac Books, pp. 3–28.
de Felice, G., de Vita, G., Bruni, A., Galimberti, A., Paoloni, G., Andreassi, S., Giuliani, A. (2019). Group, basic assumptions and complexity science. Group Analysis, 52(1), 3–22.
French, R., Simpson, P. (2010). The ’work group’: Redressing the balance in Bion’s Experiences in Groups. Human Relations, 63(12), 1859–1878.
Kets de Vries, M. (2004). Organizations on the couch : A clinical perspective on organizational dynamics. European Management Journal, 22(2), 183–200.
Nagel, C. (2019). Psychodynamic Coaching: Distinctive Features. London: Routledge.
Obholzer A. (2006). Foreword. In Brunning H (ed). Executive coaching: systems psychodynamics. London: Karnac, pp. xix-xxiv.
Turquet. P. M. (1974). Leadership: The individual and the group. In: Gibbard GS, et al. (eds) The Large Group: Therapy and Dynamics. San Francisco and London: JosseyBass.