ABSTRACT
Psychodynamic studies have usually pointed to two sources of the conservatism: reluctance to give up established relationships and fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar. The ways that groups resist change in the face of good reason have often been the subject of comment. The workshop became as zealous in illuminating the relationship between the seminars and their leaders as the seminars were in illuminating the relationship between the doctors and their patients. From an external point of view this anxiety may be described as a fear of the unknown; subjectively, however, it is a fear of all sorts of hobgoblins and foul fiends that may spring out of the unknown. Changes threaten to remove people or social structures and so to revive experiences of undermining grief; changes also threaten a degree of the unknown which at once becomes peopled with horrors.
