Experience in Groups

by Wilfred R. Bion

Book Overview

A classic study which, by synthesizing the approaches of psychoanalysis and group dynamics, has added a new dimension to the understanding of group phenomena. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345248457
• ISBN13: 9780345248459
• Release Date: September 1975
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fine insights into group behavior

Reader beware! Bion did something great here. In a detailed analysis of people's behavior in groups, he shows us that some strange and often unsettling subterranean processes are at work within groups. While these processes (and the events that follow them) may defy the understanding and description of most, Bion offers insights that are at once straightforward, bizarre and sublime. In the end, his ideas provide the reader with simple, psychodynamic explanations of group behavior. Bion points out that much of psychic human life occurs inside groups. Bion shows us that each group has a specific and directed goal to accomplish (i.e., a corporation seeks to make money and a family seeks to raise their children and provide support for the members within it). He then provides a fascinating and detailed account of the ways that these groups are often subverted from their main purpose. Bion focuses on the "basic assumptions" that lead people in groups to function in unusual ways that are frequently, if not always, outside of their awareness. Bion suggests that there are "basic assumptions" which take over in a group. Some of these assumptions are that of "Fight/Flight" or "Pairing". Bion suggests that at times, a group will abandon their work in order to unite for either fighting or fleeing. He suggests that humans are `herding' at these times-we find ourselves in a group and we think we either need to get ready for a war or to run for the hills. This unconscious assumption, based solely on being together in a group, can severely detract from the work the group was originally brought together to accomplish. Think of those peewee football leagues gone awry. We thought they were supposed to be fun for the kids but they turn out to be an education about winning by all means necessary. In contrast to the fight/flight assumption is the pairing assumption in which the group mobilizes its resources to pick two people in the group to bring together. With much hope the members try to play matchmaker and work at uniting the should-be-lovers. The unconscious purpose here is a wish to provide the group with a special child, or savior, whom the group believes, will bring them much greater successes than they have already achieved. In both of the assumptions I have mentioned, there are interesting dynamic reactions to the group's leader; will the leader be competent to lead the attack or does she/he need to be usurped in order to make way for the special new child? In this way, Bion helps the reader develop a finer appreciation for the psychodynamics that group members express toward authority figures.In each assumption, the members in the group start to replicate earlier patterns of group behavior. This repetition has a sociobiological flavor; Bion suggests that it was once quite advantageous for people to be preparing for either war or escape when they were in a group. Today, however, this behavior is not