Basic assumption groups (Bion)
Bion saw every group operating on two levels: the work group, oriented to its real task, and a basic assumption group, which behaves as if it had met for another purpose. The three basic assumptions are dependency (a leader will rescue us), fight-flight (there is an enemy to attack or escape) and pairing (two members will produce a saviour or a better future).
What drives it
Each assumption protects the group from the anxiety of the real task: dependency from responsibility, fight-flight from internal conflict and uncertainty, pairing from present difficulty by locating hope in the future. Useful for identifying what is going on in a meeting that has drifted off task.
How it shows
Work
Dependency: the team waits for the CEO to speak, nobody decides in their absence, a consultant is hired to give answers, and the leader who fails to rescue is turned on. Fight-flight: a competitor, regulator or another department becomes the focus of every meeting, energy goes into attack or reorganisation, and reflection feels like weakness. Pairing: two people (often a new hire and the boss) are watched hopefully, “once the new CTO arrives”, a coming product will fix everything. As the leader: you are the object of the dependency assumption whether you like it or not; groups pull their leaders into the role the assumption needs, and you may notice yourself becoming more heroic, more combative or more hopeful than the facts justify.
Relationships
Families run the same assumptions: the parent everyone defers to, the outside enemy that unites the family, hope placed in a child or a marriage to fix the family’s problems. In family businesses the founder often holds the dependency and the successor the pairing.
Self
In a meeting, notice when you feel a pull to rescue the group, to find someone to blame, or a hopeful excitement about a future fix, and when the group’s mood seems out of step with the actual work.
What tells it apart
Groupthink: Groupthink is about suppressing doubt to reach consensus on a decision; a basic assumption group may not be deciding anything and is instead organised around a shared fantasy of rescue, enemy or saviour.
Scapegoating: Scapegoating is one outcome, the group blaming a member; fight-flight can target an outside enemy too, and dependency and pairing involve no blame at all.
Social defences against anxiety (Menzies Lyth): Basic assumptions are shifting emotional states of a group in the moment; social defences are fixed structures and procedures that persist whoever is in the room.
A test
Ask what the group is spending its time and emotion on compared with its stated task; a stable gap organised around a leader, an enemy or a hoped-for pair points to a basic assumption.
Questions to carry
- Where did the meeting's time and feeling actually go: toward the task, a rescuer, an enemy, or a hoped-for pair?
- In my groups, what do I find myself waiting for: a rescuer, an enemy, or two people who will fix it?
How strong the research is
clinical. Widely used in group relations conferences (the Tavistock tradition) and organisational consulting, based on clinical observation of groups; there is little controlled research on the specific assumptions.
Where it comes from
Wilfred Bion, 1940s papers; 1961 (Experiences in Groups)
On the family tree: Wilfred Bion
Sources
- W.R. Bion, Experiences in Groups (1961)
- Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts (eds), The Unconscious at Work: Individual and Organizational Stress in the Human Services (1994)