The Individual and the Group

The Group has a Will

In the study of politics, public opinion and popular sentiment emerged as significant for choices by governments. Government taps into society's power, which springs from its culture and a poorly-defined common will. The crude and irrational quality of this will has often been identified: most famously by le Bon and Bion (see below).

As an individual, you are capable of using your will which means reflecting, using reason and indeed the whole panoply of creative potentials defined within the Taxonomy.

A group does not have that resource. When you are a member of a group, its will becomes dominant over yours. So each member's capacities are dramatically curtailed. Attempt to be cleverer than the group and you will be ejected. So belonging requires at minimum aware submission and supports a blind submergence of the self, especially if you are that way inclined.

Groups can function intelligently if they are intensely focused on a project with a schedule, and each member has component tasks to perform to deadlines i.e. operations as per the Tree of PH-L1s. However, note below that this is the only framework in which each person is on their own. While such a group is a team of individuals, not a crowd, it is still possible for its primary task to become submerged beneath primitive crowd-like tendencies should time-pressures weaken.

Le Bon: Group Behaviour & «Crowd Mentality»

Le Bon developed his ideas via a range of studies and drew on Freud's ideas. His findings anticipate those of modern psycho-dynamic investigators of group functioning. His views deserve mention because they were developed earlier, emerged differently, and have always had considerable influence on those who seek to manipulate the populace by propaganda and public relations.

The crowd develops a mental unity (or «group will») around simple contagious assumptions. Everyone's feelings and thoughts move in the same direction, one which is counter to how individual members would think and feel in isolation.
Anonymity fosters a weakening in the individual's sense of responsibility and other personal controls like guilt, shame, self-evaluation, reflection. People disconnect from their personal identities and lose concern for social evaluation
The crowd is not an average of its members, but rather its lowest common denominator. This commonality is to be found in universal unconscious urges for dependence, for safety, for gratification of wishes, for aggression and the like.
Sentiments run to extremes: sympathy becomes adoration, dislike becomes furious hatred; and the same crowd that can murder and loot, can show self-sacrifice and generosity.
Groups are impulsive, irritable, changeable, impetuous, with a lack of capacity to reason or make intelligent judgements. They allow non-logical associations, unreasonable generalizations, irrational beliefs, and improbable and even impossible views.
Crowds are in a state of expectancy, awaiting suggestions and authoritative leadership. Leaders emerge and use violent affirmation, repetition, and appeals to emotion. They are men of action and limited intellect or foresight who are committed to the cause. They get a submissive response despite absence of evidence, proof or reasoning.
Crowds can move rapidly from thought to action without reflection because, egged on by leaders, they are driven by a sense of rightness and invincibility.

Bion: Group Task & Basic Assumptions

Bion studied groups in which the task required exploration of its own functioning (with time boundaries but no specific time pressure). He identified three socio-mental complexes called basic assumption states, which intrude repeatedly and prevent the group focusing on its task in a sophisticated and rational way. These basic assumptions are:

Dependency. The group seeks security by looking to one person, the leader, who is idealized and viewed as omnipotent and omniscient. The group is passive and compliant until, eventually, the leader is denigrated, removed and replaced.
Fight-flight. The group is focused on self-preservation and avoids or becomes aggressive to an enemy who may be within the group or outside it. The leader is the person who mobilizes the members in the service of their panic and hostility.
Pairing. The group is viewed as existing to support an interaction of two people. It is sustained by a hopeful anticipation that the pair will somehow create a magical offspring, a person or idea, that will be the group's saviour and relieve all existential problems.

These basic assumptions operate simultaneously with the work state driven by goals and personal wills (i.e. THEE)—much like the emergent frameworks operate simultaneously with endeavours-proper. However, the group members are largely unaware of what is happening or of being controlled by their own unconscious urges. The basic assumption states ignore external realities and may switch among themselves rapidly.

Two other basic assumption states have been suggested:

Salvationist. 'Members seek to join in a powerful union with an omnipotent force, unobtainably high, to surrender themselves for passive participation and thereby to feel existence, well-being and wholeness.' In his paper, Turquet made the link to neonatal unity.
Me-ness. The group becomes invisible or does not exist because it is taboo, contaminating, and all that is negative. The only reality is that of a selfish self-reliant individual who withdraws or interacts instrumentally. Only private troubles count, but affect is suppressed and group issues are denied. Life is ordered, calm, polite, and androgynous. In their paper, Lawrence et al link this to: the me v not-me stage of infantile development or to earliest experience of good-bad splitting and projection.

Handling the Group

The conception of these emergent frameworks is evident from the reversal of the dynamic duality. Instead of the social situation controlling higher Tree levels, you take control there. This control does not become a reality of the associated endeavours-proper. It is a feature of a personal mental attitude that can accompany and strengthen those endeavours when they appear to be failing. As explained, this attitude draws its energies from all Root Levels (i.e. ultimately from personal biology).

The relevant social environment is always a group or groups (organised or undefined) with a «group mentality» bubbling under the surface (as described above). The smallest group is 2 people, but you commonly deal with much larger groups. Neighbourhoods and small associations or firms range from a few to over a hundred persons, civic communities, associations, and large organizations many thousands, and society itself is counted in the millions.

In the 4 lower Trees, PH-L1s to PH-L4s, the relevant group is fixed—even if its members are chosen or even if you previously chose to participate. As you ascend the PH elements, the power of the group increases.

	Tree of PH-L1s using Performance to Stop Avoidance.	For yourself, the group is any that may be about, like your family. In assembly line working, the group is the factory personnel and management. The group is irrelevant to your personal effort, except that it may inadvertently impede or disrupt you.
	Tree of PH-L2s using Certainty to Make a Project Succeed.	The group consists of those who have to deliver the project with you and for you. You can choose members but once chosen, the group has its own will. You can replace individual members but not the group as a whole.
	Tree of PH-L3s using Acceptability to Establish Ideas as Sound.	The group is a well-defined body or ill-defined crowd who are to receive your account. You may be a member before or after, or not. In any case, there is nothing you can do about the group's existence and power over your account.
	Tree of PH-L4s using Well-Being to Restore Social Harmony.	The group with its divisions is one to which you belong at the time of the increase in tensions. You function within it and are also within one of its sub-groups. Your interests depend on those groups, and they typically continue without you.

In the 3 higher Trees, PH-L5s to PH-L7s, the relevant group can be changed. As you ascend, the degree of possible change diminishes until it only occurs in the mind.

	Tree of PH-L5s using Understanding to Affirm a Solid Bond.	Interpersonal relationships come into existence by choice, and are maintained by continuing choice. You are in part responsible for maintaining this unique group and have the power to replace it with another.
	Tree of PH-L6s using Autonomy to Design Better Arrangements.	Contractual relationships arise from a promise and a work agreement, and continue so long as that remains valid and applicable. You have the power to modify the identity of that group subject to others agreeing.
	Tree of PH-L7s using Selflessness to Repair Psychic Damage.	You experience yourself as embedded in groups that shape (or shaped) your identity, values and place in the cosmos. You have the power to alter your view of your groups, including how you relate to them and use them.

Matrix Summary

Viewing the 7 emergent Tree frameworks in order reveals a progressive change in the relation between You and any Group in which you are a member.

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Tree Centres Function for You	"Forcing" the Framework	You & Group Power	You & Group Relationship	Using Your Psychosocial Pressure
PH-L7s Allowing Self Recovery	Psychoanalysis	You can view your Groups differently.	You must use reflection to appreciate where you stand in relation to any Group.	Your Selflessness enables you to learn (PH7) the effects of your Groups on you.
PH-L6s Asserting Your Expectations	Change Consultancy	You can modify your Group.	You seek out a Group where a promise of desirable reciprocal interactions is definitive.	You must bring your values (PH6) to bear on the Group by exerting Autonomy.
PH-L5s Resolving Interpersonal Differences	Psychodynamic Psychotherapy	You can replace your Group.	You are in a two-person group of your own choosing, that is managed via insight.	You need dialogue (PH5) to gain Understanding of your self, the other and the Group.
PH-L4s Reducing Intra-Group Conflict	Holding a Group to Ransom	Only Groups	You represent the Group and deal with sub-Groups, ideally via win-win compromises.	You must be tolerant (PH4) and generate Well-being for all in the Group.
PH-L3s Bypassing Social Resistance	Propaganda & Public Relations	Group dominates You	You, as a messenger, are at the mercy of the Group, unless you shape emotions via charisma.	By seeking Acceptability, you adapt (PH3) and can then handle the Group.
PH-L2s Refusing to Give Up	Ambition-driven Leadership	You dominate Group	You, as leader, can create a vision that unites the Group that you need for your project.	Your Certainty in the relevant knowledge (PH2) attracts others into your Group.
PH-L1s Overcoming Your Inertia	Assembly Line Systems	Only You	You are your own instrument, and no relevant Group exists.	Your Performance depends on developing momentum to ensure your progress (PH1).

Initially posted: 20-Sep-2013. Last amended: 31-Jul-2024.