What_Is_a_Group__Discuss,_with_Reference_to_Bion's_‘Experiences_in_Groups’_and_Your_Own

Introduction Four people are in a room, lifting a piano together from one side of the room to the other. How many entities, or things, are in the room' Uncontroversially, there are at least five – the piano, and each of the four persons. But is it correct to say that there is also a sixth thing, namely a group of piano-lifters' What is a group – is it really a thing as such, or is the word simply an abstract shorthand that we use to denote some individuals who interact' Before beginning to answer this question, it is pertinent to consider why it matters to those interested in studying group and organisational behaviour. Freud (1921) opens his most famous discussion about groups by arguing that the study of individual psychology always involves some element of social study. Is the reverse also true - that studying groups and society is not a reality in itself, but a different formula for studying the actions of individuals' At first sight, Bion (1961) appears unequivocally to favour language which takes for granted the existence of the group qua group: When the group has come together in this way, it has become something as real and as much a part of human life as a family. (p.69) Le Bon (1895) (whom Freud quotes extensively) is even more straightforward: There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts, except in the case of individuals forming a group…[who] constitute a new being which displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each […] singly. (p.29) But other, later theorists take quite the opposite view: The view that a group has properties over and above the individuals who make it up and their inter-relation, can be very misleading. (Cooper, 1999) Surely this controversy must be resolved if we are to know just what it is we are talking about when we offer hypotheses about groups and organisations, otherwise we may be justly accused of a very basic imprecision. But there is more at stake here. Amado (1995), in his exchange of papers with Jaques after the latter’s repudiation of the notion of psychoanalytic study of organisations, found a rare moment of accord with Jaques when he wrote: As regards the notion of organisational unconscious, I completely support the idea that it does not exist. But if it can be shown that a group is a single composite thing, a whole composed of members which are its parts, then Gardner’s (1993) logical demonstration of the existence of the unconscious state of mind could in fact be applied to the group. That would take us to a valuable application of the psychoanalysis of organisations; one that could logically make bold claims based a priori on the notion of the existence of a group unconscious. I would like to demonstrate why I think it is correct to assert that groups do exist. Sections 1 and 2 below introduce my reasons, section 3 presents some opposing views, and section 4 explains why I think the arguments outlined in section 3 are less apt. 1. Bion and the characteristics of the group A convincing case can be built to argue that the group exists as a composite thing, and a large number of Bion’s observations in Experiences in Groups appear to be premised on this idea. For example: (i) The explanation of certain phenomena must be sought in the matrix of the group and not in the individuals that go to make up the group [my italics]…To argue that one is not dealing with a group is to prove oneself naively imperceptive. (pp.132-3) Bion inserts here an analogy between a group and a clock; time-keeping is not a function of any single part of a clock, he says, but when all the parts are put together it is of course a function of the clock. Bion is giving the clearest possible example of a metaphysician’s composite object, a whole composed of parts, which survives the replacement of those parts. When I take my clock to the jeweler to get a new battery put in it, I do not say that I have left with a different clock. I think that our intuitions support Bion’s analogy. I perceive that there is a group of staff at my local Sainsbury’s; if Janet, a cashier, retires on Friday and is replaced by Mildred the following Monday, I do not then say that there is a new group of staff at Sainsbury’s. (ii) Even where Bion’s language is not so assertive, his premise still appears to be the same: Because the hostility of the individuals was being contributed to the group anonymously, each member could quite sincerely deny that he felt hostile. (p.50) Many times throughout the book Bion observes that individual members have projected their feelings into the group. The individuals deny that the feelings exist, though Bion contends they do. It is hard to see how such statements could logically be made by anyone who denied the existence of the group as an entity; feelings cannot be projected onto nothing. (iii) Furthermore, on another occasion: The group at the moment seemed to me to be led by the two absentees. (p.48) Again, this makes most sense if it is read as an observation about the whole entity. Otherwise one is forced to interpret that Bion feels able to analyse interactions between individuals regardless of whether they are present or absent. 2. Other evidence for the group as an entity I believe that not only our intuitions, but also some of my own experiences in group life, help to support the notion that the group exists as a composite whole. (i) I attended a short group dynamics conference at the Institute of Group Analysis, over several days, which included regular sessions in an experiential group. Two participants decided to miss one of the experiential group sessions, because they wanted to watch a major football match which was being shown at the same time in a nearby pub. The session that they missed, and the following session after they returned, were very much taken up with material relating to their actions and the feelings of other members about it. This is akin to the situation Bion describes which I referred to above – the agenda is set, the group is led, by the two absentees. It follows that there must be an agenda in order for it to be set. I recall one member angrily asserting to the two returned absentees: “The group cannot do its work if people behave in this way.” Again, it follows that there must be a group for this statement to be valid. Furthermore, the angry member’s sense of injustice was not only about a wrong done to himself; his language suggests that there was some greater good, some additional and higher level, against which the absentees had offended. (ii) Another example: I was working as Managing Director of a company with a woman Chair of the board. [For the sake of clarity in this vignette, I state that I am a man.] She and I were both comparatively young, in our 30s, and we each had young babies at home. The company was building a large new headquarters, and at one stage the construction work ran into very significant and intractable difficulties. At some board meetings very serious potential consequences were considered, such as canceling the entire construction project (with losses of millions of pounds), or even winding up the company itself. Yet it seemed to me that the more alarming the content of the discussion, the less engaged and interested most board members seemed to be. They rarely suggested courses of action, or volunteered activity of their own which might help. They appeared to have the attitude, a kind of faith, that the Chair and I would sort it all out. I believe that this vignette shows an example of Bion’s basic assumption of pairing. I think that the “pair” of the Chair and I, in the authoritative roles, and as young people with evidence of potent sexuality in the form of actual babies, was an irresistible “pair” for the group of board members to consider, in fantasy, as likely to produce salvation from annihilation. Here again I take this example as evidence that all those who were part of this group believed that they were part of one. Leaving aside for now the legal formality that these individuals formed “the board” of a company, an identifiable entity, I think that the unity of their attitude to the central pair constituted enough unity, in and of itself, to allow them to be regarded as one thing. Wittgenstein (1967) wrote: Might it not be imagined that several people had carried out an intention without any of them having it' In this way, a government may have an intention that no man has. Combining Bion’s views analysed above with my own experience may at this point suggest the conclusion that Wittgenstein here encapsulates. 3. The opposite view However, there is also considerable evidence to suggest that it is impossible to assert correctly that groups exist as entities in their own right whenever several people act together. I would like to examine some metaphysical evidence for this, to reconsider Bion’s views in the light of this evidence, and to consider some statements by Foulkes. (i) Russell’s Paradox (1903) shows that it is impossible to define “the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as members”. Suppose that I want to write a list of all the items in the room I am sitting in now. I need to add the list itself to the list, since it is also an item in this room. Now I write a list of all the items in the bathroom, and then a third list of all the items in my garden shed. These last two lists do not contain the lists themselves as items, since they are in here with me, and not in those places. I now try to write the list of all my lists that do not contain themselves as items (I call this list “M”). Clearly the bathroom and shed lists will be items on M. But should M itself be added' That is the paradox. If it is added, then M will contain itself, so will no longer satisfy its definition. But if it is not added, then it is not a complete list of the lists that do not contain themselves, since M is one of these. In the context of my theme, Russell’s Paradox proves that it cannot logically be true that wherever there are some things, a set of those things is also automatically created. The paradox names at least one set that can never be correctly defined. This may mean, then, that it cannot be valid to say that wherever there are some people, there is also a group of those people. (ii) David-Hillel Ruben (1985) argues at length that social objects are not wholes whose parts are human individuals. I will inevitably do him injustice by attempting to précis his 150-odd pages into a few sentences. Nevertheless, I summarise briefly two assertions of his which address my theme most directly. His two reasons for rejecting the “composite” idea of groups and their members are: a) that the relation of “being a part of a whole” is transitive (because a screw which is part of a bicycle brake is not just a part of the brake, it is also evidently a part of the bicycle). But the relation of “being a member of a group” is not (because I might be a member of a union, and the union is a member of the TUC, but I am not a member of the TUC). Therefore the two relations cannot be equivalent. b) It is true to say that if a1…an are material parts, then they can just completely compose one whole at a time at most (for example, this particular wheel, tyre, handlebar and gear assembly can only compose my bicycle at this moment, not your bicycle too). But two groups can have exactly the same people as members; for example, all the members of a family might also be all and the only members of a jazz band. Therefore the members of a group cannot be like the material parts of a whole. (iii) Is Bion’s belief in the actual existence of the group unequivocal, as I suggest above' At least two observations in Experiences in Groups suggest not: The belief that a group exists, as distinct from an aggregate of individuals, is an essential part of this [Kleinian] regression. (p.141) On that occasion I attributed behaviour to the group on the strength of the behaviour of one or two individuals in it. (pp57-8) (iv) In order to justify his statement which I quoted on p.1 above, Robin Cooper quotes some assertions by Foulkes in support of his view that Foulkes does not recognise that the group is itself an object of study. “Our ultimate object is the individual” (Foulkes, 1990, p.179); “[Group study] is based on the individual in Cartesian isolationism…social relationships are secondary” (1984, p.124); “[The group] frames everything, but cannot itself be framed” (1990, p.230). Should we conclude, then, that Bion and Foulkes were at best undecided about this question' 4. Arguments against those presented in section 3 above (i) I think that Russell’s and Ruben’s logic is pretty robust. Some philosophers and mathematicians have offered arguments against their views expressed above, but I’m not sure that these take our understanding of their contributions to my context much further. I allow that Russell and Ruben have proved that I could not say with logical certainty that the five people standing at the bus stop, or all the people in Surrey who have eaten eggs today, make a composite group. But for my purposes they do not need to, because these two examples of groups are not examples of groups with any social significance. To quote a different section of Ruben’s own work: Groups exist only when individuals with some common property are regarded, or regard themselves, in certain socially significant ways; whereas of course sets of individuals exist quite apart from these further considerations. (p.21) Returning to my very first example in the light of this – I asked whether the four piano-lifters make a group or not – my answer is, it depends who they are. If they don’t know each other and they just met in the room to lift the piano, I conclude that they do not. But if they are all employees of XYZ Removals Ltd., I believe they do, because the property of being employed by the same employer is clearly a socially significant property. Provided a judgement is made about whether the group being spoken of is socially significant or not, I conclude that it is quite logical to assert that the group exists. (ii) I allow that Bion and Foulkes occasionally made observations which betrayed some confusion around this area, and might now be construed as remarks against the idea of the existence of the group. But I believe that the general thrust of the work of each is so clearly in the opposite direction that there is no real room for doubt. Bion repeatedly describes a paradigm of activity in groups whereby, in a direct enactment of the principle that Freud described (p.1 above), the psychology of individual members can only be observed because the group exists, and via the framework of the group. I think the most telling observation of Bion’s in this respect is this one: In every group it will be common at some time or another to find patients complaining that the treatment is long; that they always forget what happened in the previous group; that they do not seem to have learnt anything; and that they do not see…what the experiences to which I am trying to draw attention can matter to them. (pp88-9) For “patients” and “treatment”, substitute “members / students” and “method” in the case of an experiential group, or “staff” and “meetings” in the case of team meetings at work; Bion’s point is that all groups behave in the same way to some degree. If this is true, it can’t be to do with sets of particular individuals, and it must be because the format and structure of a group creates a kind of unconscious state solely in the act of its creation. I read Foulkes as no more equivocal. “The whole is more elementary than the parts” (1990, p.154); “The ‘Group as a Whole’ is not a phrase, it is a living organism” (1983, p.140). Indeed Foulkes’ coining of the term ‘Group as a Whole’ is an excellent way to sum up this side of the dilemma. (iii) Do my own feelings when participating in group life offer any assistance in supporting this conclusion' I believe they do. First, I notice that I feel entirely differently about my colleagues in my D10 experiential group when we are in session, as opposed to when we are down at the pub after a session. At the pub I feel far less competitive, wound up, and angry. It’s not just the beer. It must also mean that a group’s formal activity creates something, in and of itself, which is more than the sum of the individuals who happen to be in the room. Second, in my office every day, I feel a sense of responsibility to my colleagues which transcends their presence as individuals, and also the existence of the organisation as a legal entity. Clearly all employees have a responsibility to that entity. But separately from this, I contend that feelings such as “I don’t want to let my colleagues down on this deal” or “I must make sure I am cheerful at the Christmas do” are neither feelings about the individuals concerned, nor feelings about the legal entity that is the company, but about the group of staff. These feelings would remain the same even if the personnel concerned changed. So something transcends those individuals specifically. Conclusion If we accept that it exists, then what does “the group” represent unconsciously, to me or to anyone' Foulkes (1975) wrote: On a very deep, archaic level…the group represents the mother. Bion is surely suggesting this same thing when he writes of the “massive regression, to mechanisms described by Melanie Klein” (p.141) of the person in a group. We hope to find containment in the group; we may be alternately frustrated and satisfied by it; we may experience it as a good or bad object or both; we often love it and hate it. My own experiences in groups without doubt reflect these ideas. I do not see how they could do so if it were not true that the socially significant group is its own entity, a composite thing which is separate from, and more than, the individuals who comprise it. Bibliography AMADO, G. (1995). “Why psychoanalytical knowledge helps us understand organisations; a discussion with Elliott Jaques”. Human Relations, 48, 4, 354. BION, W.R. (1961). Experiences in groups. London, Tavistock Publications. (Reprinted: London, Routledge, 2001.) COOPER, R. (1999). “Foulkes and group analysis”. In: ed. OAKLEY, C, What is a group' London, Rebus Press, p.49. FOULKES, S. (1975). “A short outcome of the therapeutic processes in group-analytic psychotherapy”. In: ed. Lear, Spheres of group analysis. London, Group Analytic Society, p.128. FOULKES, S. (1983). Introduction to group-analytic psychotherapy. London, Maresfield Reprints. FOULKES, S. (1984). Therapeutic group analysis. London, Karnac Books. FOULKES, S. (1990). Selected papers on psychoanalysis and group analysis. London, Karnac Books. FREUD, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. In: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XVIII. London, Hogarth Press, 1955. (PFL vol. 12, p.95). GARDNER, S. (1993). Irrationality and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Cambridge, CUP, Pp.208-9. LE BON, G. (1895). Psychologie des foules. 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