Group analysis, group therapy, etc. Flashcards
Who was the ‘founder’ of group analysis?
Wilfred Bion
Author of Object Relations theory
Melanie Klein
Mechanisms proposed by Klein in group analysis
Projective identification, scapegoating, splitting
In Bion’s view groups approximate what type of behavior?
Psychotic
In Freud’s view groups approximate what type of behavior?
Neurotic
Phantasy
In Klein’s concept, phantasy emanates from within and imagines what is without, it offers an unconscious commentary on instinctual life and links feelings to objects and creates a new amalgam: the world of imagination. Through its ability to phantasize the baby tests out, primitively ‘thinks’ about, its experiences of inside and outside. (Mitchell, 1986)
The three types of basic assumptions, as defined by Bion
Dependence (church, guilt, depression) - security for the group, protection by one individual
Fight-flight (army, anger, hate) - preservation of the group at all costs
Pairing (aristocracy, Messianic hope) - the group meets for the purpose of reproduction
Characteristics of the leader of a basic assumption group:
Leader ‘as much the creature of BA as any other member of the group.
Their personality renders them particularly susceptible to obliteration.
of individuality, by the BA groups leadership requirements.
The leader has no greater freedom to be himself than any other member of the group.
Phantasy social systems
Elliot Jaques - When external objects are shared with others and used in common for
purposes of projection, phantasy social systems may be established.
Identification with the aggressor
(Originally identified by Anna Freud):
Segal (1992, p31): “might involve the phantasy of actually taking the aggressor inside the self in an attempt to control them, then feeling controlled by them and needing to get rid of other, threatened and vulnerable parts of the self into something else (the new victim)”.
Part-objects - a transpersonal defense mechanism
Eg. nurses talk about patients not by name, but by bed numbers or by their disease or a diseased organ “the liver in bed 10” or “the pneumonia in bed 15”
Group mentality (Bion)
Contributed to by the individual in ways he is unaware
Influencing him disagreeably whenever he thinks or behaves in a
manner at variance.
A machinery of intercommunication and a foundation for a
successful system of evasion and denial.
Racist systems may perpetuate themselves unconsciously
Freud’s “uncanny”
The uncanny is ‘related to what…arouses dread and horror’
(Freud, 1919a, p. 219)
The uncanny object is frightening, alien, but strangely familiar
Repressed aspects of ourselves ‘come back to haunt us’
Narcissism of minor differences
Freud (1917) adopted from British anthropologist Ernest Crawley: ‘the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other’ - ‘such sensitiveness…to just these details of differentiation’
