Biography

1. Biography

2. Biography

3. Main Theory About Group By participating in groups, the human has different ways of reacting. Two kinds of tendency appear: one is directed toward the accomplishment of the task and the other seems to oppose it. Work is obstructed by a more primary, regressive activity, characteristic of the id-function. Three Main Concepts: Basic Assumptions:refers to the existence of a common, unanimous and anonymous opinion at any given moment; tells us something about the content of this opinion, allowing greater insight into the emotional phenomena expressed in groups. Basic assumptions are shaped by intense emotions of primitive origin and are powerful examples of the workings of unconscious phantasy. Their existence helps to determine the organization that the group will adopt and also the way in which it will approach its tasks. Therefore, the group culture will always show evidence of the underlying basic assumptions active a any given time. The underlying emotional impulses in a group expresses a shared phantasy of an omnipotent or magic type as to how to achieve its goals. These are often irrational, working in unconscious ways, often opposed to the conscious rational opinions of the group members. Group Mentality: Group mentality is the container of all the contributions made by the members of the group Work Group:

4. Comments • Bion's noticeable influence on experiential and empirical studies of group dynamics, leadership, and group relations • devised a way of working with groups of them that gave them back their self-esteem and willingness to fight • he elaborated a whole theory of mental functioning around the concepts of ‘the container and the contained’

5. BION AND EXPERIENCES IN GROUPS by Robert M. Younghttp://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap148h.html Some content cited from the book: • This view does not go far enough... I think that the central position in group dynamics is occupied by the more primitive mechanisms which Melanie Klein has described as peculiar to the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. In other words, I feel... that it is not simply a matter of the incompleteness of the illumination provided by Freud's discovery of the family group as the prototype of all groups, but the fact that this incompleteness leaves out the source of the main emotional drives of the group (ibid.).  • Further investigation shows that each basic assumption contains features that correspond so closely with extremely primitive part objects that sooner or later psychotic anxiety, appertaining to these primitive relationships, is released. These anxieties, and the mechanisms peculiar to them, have already been displayed in psychoanalysis by Melanie Klein, and her descriptions tally well with the emotional states  • far different either from the overt task of the group or even from the tasks that would appear to be appropriate to Freud's view of the group as based on the family group. But approached from the angle of psychotic anxiety, associated with phantasies of primitive part object relationships... the basic assumption phenomena appear far more to have the characteristics of defensive reactions to psychotic anxiety, and to be not so much at variance with Freud's views as supplementary to them. In my view, it is necessary to work through both the stresses that appertain to family patterns and the still more primitive anxieties of part object relationships. In fact I consider the latter to contain the ultimate sources of all group behavior (p. 476). 

6. BION AND EXPERIENCES IN GROUPS by Robert M. Younghttp://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap148h.html • In Bion's view, then, what matters in individual and group behavior is more primitive than the Freudian level of explanation. The ultimate sources of our distress are psychotic anxieties, and much of what happens in individuals and groups is a result of defenses erected against psychotic anxieties, so that we do not have to endure them consciously. Bion says of the group,  • My impression is that the group approximates too closely, in the minds of the individuals composing it, to very primitive phantasies about the contents of the mother's body. The attempt to make a rational investigation of the dynamics of the group is therefore perturbed by fears, and mechanisms for dealing with them, which are characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position. The investigation cannot be carried out without the stimulation and activation of those levels... the elements of the emotional situation are so closely allied to phantasies of the earliest anxieties that the group is compelled, whenever the pressure of anxiety becomes too great, to take defensive action (Bion, 1955, p. 456).  • The psychotic anxieties in question involve splitting and projective identification and are characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, now as group processes (p. 457). According to Bion, the move from the individual to the group does not raise new issues about explanation. He says a little further on, 'The apparent difference between group psychology and individual psychology is an illusion produced by the fact that the group brings into prominence phenomena which appear alien to an observer unaccustomed to using the group' (p. 461).

7. BION AND EXPERIENCES IN GROUPS by Robert M. Younghttp://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap148h.html • At the heart of his ideas about groups is the observation that although groups are normally set up to pursue sensible and realistic goals -- he calls this the ‘work group’ -- they inevitably from time to time fall into madness, which he calls ‘basic assumption’ functioning. Bion specified three types of basic assumption functioning - dependency, pairing and fight-flight. You can read about these in the book, and you can ponder others’ bids for being a highly-regarded disciple in the writings of those who profess to have discovered a fourth (Hopper, 1997, 2003) basic assumption and a fifth (Lawrence et al., 1996). I am rather regretful that these forms of psychotic functioning have been spelled out and enumerated. In conferences and discussions about group functioning there is a tendency to become giddy about noticing which of these modes the group is in. I think this can too easily occur at the expense of pondering the texture and meaning of the group process without too quick a resort to ‘Aha!’ and labels. Each group, in my opinion, is entitled to its own narrative, vocabulary and rhetoric.