Group Unconscious Common Orientation: Exploratory Study at the Basque Foundation for the Investigation of Mental Health Group Training for Therapists

Abstract

Group phenomena have been used since antiquity in therapeutic, social, economic and political domains. According to Bion, the interactions between group members generate a "group unconscious" and its behavior is governed and oriented by Bion's "basic assumptions." The present work has been conducted during group analysis training at the Basque Foundation for the Investigation of Mental Health (OMIE) at Bilbao, consisting of eleven sessions. The participants are presented with an "absurd questionnaire" proposing 50 pairs of images, in each of which one image has to be chosen. The results are used to search for evidence in favor of the influence of group dynamics on individual choices of the images proposed in the questionnaire. Our analysis finds some evidence for an effect of group dynamics both on the initial choice of the pictures and on the evolution of the number of changes (swaps) of picture choices across the eleven sessions. We interpret these effects in the light of Bion's view of group dynamics, which postulates an immediate onset of the unconscious and its evolution during the group activity.

Addendum on Entropy to the Exploratory Study on Group Unconscious at the Basque Foundation for the Investigation of Mental Health Group Training for Therapists

“…The present papers extends a previous work (Trojaola-Zapirain et al, 2014) on Group unconscious common orientation based on an exploratory study at the Basque Foundation for the Investigation of Mental Health group training for therapists. In this work we presented evidence of the effects of the group situation on the behaviour of the group members in terms of their choices when confronted with a questionnaire proposing the choice of pictures in pairs.…”

“…In other words, we would like to test whether the presence of an orientation of the group unconscious has a measurable effect on the real world. As described in the our previous paper (Trojaola-Zapirain et al, 2014) we try minimising biases that can be introduced by common cultural background such as news, politics, arts, and so forth, we designed an "absurdum" questionnaire so that answers would rely as little as possible on logical thinking and acquired knowledge, using pictures as unrelated as possible to each other (Figure 1). The goal of the current study is to consider here the evolution of entropy in groups, studying the possible orientation of answers and the corresponding trend of the entropy.…”

“…To evaluate to what extent participants could act according to a common group unconscious, we used an "absurdum questionnaire" of 50 pairs of pictures (Trojaola-Zapirain et al, 2014). For each of the fifty pairs, participants were asked to choose one of the two pictures.…”

A Comparison of the Evolution and Entropy of Responses to Picture Choices on an “Absurdum Questionnaire” between Members of Two Different Training Groups

“…In two previous analyses (Trojaola-Zapirain et al, 2014;2015), we presented evidence of the effects of the group situation on the behavior of participants confronted with questions requiring them to choose between pictures arranged in pairs. In the present study, we extend these results by administering the same questionnaire to a group of caregivers for psychiatric patients during their training on the prevention and management of aggression in the hospital setting.…”

“…The first study (Trojaola-Zapirain et al, 2014) was performed during group-analysis training for group therapists at the Basque Foundation for the Investigation of Mental Health (OMIE) in Bilbao, Spain. The second study (Trojaola-Zapirain et al, 2015) was conducted during the Preventive Approach and Controlled Intervention (APIC) training for the management of aggression for psychiatric caregivers, in Geneva, Switzerland.…”