Psychoanalysis, group dynamics
Wilfred Bion
1897 – 1979
Groups under pressure flee the work by fighting, fleeing, or waiting for a saviour. Naming the basic assumption is often the whole intervention.
Read alongside: Sense
- Start with
- Experiences in Groups (1961)
- Where they resist the book
- The framework is interpretive and hard to falsify. It illuminates a room; it does not prove what is happening in it.
Works worth the time
Experiences in Groups · 1961
Short, and still the most useful description of a group avoiding its own task.
Read further
- Melanie Klein Trust: Wilfred Bion ↗
Melanie Klein Trust
- Wikipedia: Wilfred Bion ↗
Wikipedia
Where Bion appears
Threat narrows the field it most needs open.
Bion describes groups fleeing the work by fighting, fleeing, or waiting for a saviour. Edmondson's psychological safety is the condition under which a group can stay with an uncomfortable fact long enough to learn from it. Kegan's immunity to change explains why the leader's own composure is so often the constraint.