1 Boring Old Man

My friends tease me about my "theories." It’s kind of a hobby, piddling with theories to see if they fit. And one of my favorite theories of all time in the Group Theory of Wilfrid Bion [or at least my version of it]. The part I resonate with has to do with the formation of a cohesive group – something that I’ve seen to be true over and over. There’s no precedent for using such a theory to describe a group as large as a country, but I am undeterred.

Bion was talking about the process that goes on in the formation of an unstructured therapy group. His basic premise is that when groups of people come together, a lot of emotion is mobilized – fear and aggression being two big ones. He understood the dynamics of group formation in terms of these two emotions. Since the members of an unstructured group have nothing to coalesce around, they will begin to search for something. So a variety of things begin to happen. Some member, usually someone with a quirky personality, will begin to get on people’s nerves. And the group will begin to coalesce around getting rid of that person [called the scapegoat]. Or the group might discover a shared prejudice and begin to mobilize around this shared dislike. Bion’s point is that in response to the fear of being rejected by the group, members become aggressive and "rejecting." If the group is allowed to eject a member, it becomes a killing group and may continue in that mode forever. Such a group is unsafe. If the group is allowed to form around a shared enemy, it becomes a hate group – also unsafe. Other dangers include the formation of subgroups, like on those reality shows on t.v. – again unsafe.

So the main job of the group leader in the early days of a group is to keep the mobilized aggression of the group from finding a target, and it’s a daunting task in practice. What is the reward for succeeding as a leader? Sooner or later, the aggression of the group will be turned on the leader. In practice, this is not much fun, because by the time this happens, the group will have developed a number of resentments towards the leader, and the attack will be aimed at something the leader has actually done – some real insensitivity or error along the way. It’s a peculiar reward for success in defending others to be the brunt of a unified attack, but it’s required. An effective leader must be brought down to size. The only task for the leader at that point is to survive, by no means guaranteed. If the leader prevents subgrouping, scapegoating, and being personally expelled, the reward is a group that has tamed its collective aggression and is readsy to get down to work helping [and loving] each other. Such therapy groups are a powerful agent for change and last for years.

You can over-ride these dynamics by being an autocratic leader, or by allowing the group to have a shared enemy. But such groups rarely bring about therapeutic results. They just play "follow the leader" or "get the enemy." My extrapolation to presidential politics whether warranted or not should be obvious from the way I told the story. Jimmy Carter succeeded in becoming the focus of attack, but was expelled. Bush/Cheney/Addington were paradigmatic autocrats leading us to ruin. Obama has positioned himself to be the kind of leader that has the potential to be effective and bring about change. His opponents have battered him and battered him, yet he has refused to become the darling of his supporters. He’s continued to reach out to the dogs that bite his hand, in spite of their viciousness. He is being attacked from all sides, has taken a hit in his popularity/approval ratings, yet he moves along carefully staying as neutral as possible in the face of a lot of pressure. I think it will get much worse before it gets better, and I think he has more than a few rounds to lose along the way. But his trajectory is aiming towards survival. I, for one, think he’ll make it. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll move us closer to being a "safe", "non-killing", "non-scapegoating" group. I refer to such large, safe groups as "a country" – as in "united we stand, divided we fall."