Using the Class Group

 Other Basic Assumptions

baF: Basic Assumption Fight/Flight

An organisation or group operating in a competitive or hostile environment has to mobilise aggression (although not to the exclusion of rationality) in order to survive and win. It also has to know when to avoid problems and to back off from conflicts it may not be able to win.

Such a group will act as if it has met to fight (or perhaps run away from) something beyond itself, which it will construe as a threat or object to be conquered. Sales teams, groups in the armed forces, sports teams, and unions all need a degree of combativeness to succeed.

Of course, that fight needs to be directed outwards, in such a way as to bring the members of the group together: if it is not—as sometimes happens when the battle is won or the threat disappears—the fight can become directed inwards, and the group can tear itself apart in internecine strife and factionalism.

In teaching, there are occasions on which it is necessary or desirable to mobilise fight. Problem-based learning, for example, is basically a struggle with a problem. Individual or team-based quizzes or competitions can be used to enhance the learning process—but there is the possibility that this culture can become negative. The struggle can become a fight with the teacher, or flight can be mobilised to avoid the task.

Flight, of course, in the form of day-dreaming, talking about irrelevant material, encouraging teacher digressions, and the like is so common in classes as to be hardly worth mentioning. It may well be projected onto some individuals who distract their colleagues or of course just fail to turn up.

baP: Basic Assumption Pairing

This account is more likely to put people off accepting the idea than persuade them towards it, particularly when there are sub-groups involved or the "coupling" is single-sex. Nevertheless, the phenomenon itself is recognisable, most obviously in the hope which we tend to invest in negotiations: when two sides in a conflict start talking, the expectations of a solution emerging can be very high (even if they are often disappointed). Those expectations can support the negotiators, or pressurise them. If the negotiations fail, the disappointment can be profound and despairing.

In teaching, the tutorial is the most obvious arena for Pairing. Apart from the potential for abuse if it breaks professional boundaries, such individual attention can restore the hopes of an anxious student. Just occasionally, a class "puts up" a member to question and discuss with the teacher, with the hopes of the group riding on them to elucidate a point they cannot understand. More often, however, the pairing takes place within the class as an expression of no confidence in a failed leader — the teacher. Using small group working within a larger group can mobilise a degree of pairing: if used judiciously we are all aware of its potential.

Later Additions

For the sake of completeness: there are two other basic assumptions which are not part of the Bion canon, as it were, but later additions.

Basic Assumption Oneness applies where the group members collude to deny that there are any significant differences between them: the group is all and the individuals nothing.

• Basic Assumption Me is the opposite; it applies when the members deny that they are members or that the group has any reality or potency, so they are not effectively able to engage with each other. This may well occur in the amorphous groups characteristic of many college courses, but we don't need a theory of this sophistication to account for it.

Basic Assumption Dependence

This page is more for the sake of completeness than anything

For the general theory click here

For more on basic assumption Dependence, which is the one which matters most, click here