Collusion
An unconscious agreement between two or more people to share and avoid the same fear, with each acting out one side of it: one carries the competence and the other the helplessness, one the anger and the other the calm.
What drives it
It protects both from facing something neither can bear alone, by locating each person's disowned half in the other. It explains why couples and teams cling to arrangements they both complain about.
How it shows
Work
A CEO who can't confront people pairs with a COO who plays bad cop; both complain about their roles but neither changes them, because the CEO stays liked and the COO stays powerful. A leadership team colludes in not naming that the flagship product is failing: each raises minor issues, nobody says the obvious, and the board hears the pipeline is 'building'.
Relationships
One partner is 'the emotional one', the other 'the rational one', and both need the split: one never has to feel, the other never has to think. Or a partner who complains of being smothered, married to one who complains of being shut out, and neither leaves.
Self
Notice what your partner or colleague does that you complain about but would feel lost without. The change you say you want and then undermine when they try is often your half of the deal.
What tells it apart
Codependency: Codependency is one person's over-responsibility; collusion is a two-sided unconscious deal in which the 'helpless' party is as invested as the helper.
Over-functioning and under-functioning: Over- and under-functioning is the visible imbalance; collusion is the shared fear holding it in place. If one person changes and the other works to restore the old balance, collusion is likely.
Groupthink: Groupthink is pressure toward consensus in a decision; collusion avoids a specific shared anxiety and can persist with no decision in view.
A test
When one party starts to change their role, watch whether the other resists or sabotages it; resistance from the person who complained loudest is the sign.
Questions to carry
- When one person began to change their role, how did the other respond, even the one who complained most?
- Which half of a shared fear do I carry in my closest relationship, and what does the other person carry for me?
How strong the research is
clinical. A psychodynamic couples concept with clinical support and little controlled research.
Where it comes from
Henry Dicks, 1967 (Marital Tensions); Jürg Willi, 1975 (The Couple in Collusion)