ABSTRACT
The chapter presents the theory of the fourth basic assumption, which provides a bridge between the Bionian study of group relations and Foulkesian group analysis, and between psychoanalysis and sociology. Bion (1961) conceptualised three basic assumptions associated with specific kinds of anxieties, processes and roles: dependency, fight/flight, and pairing. The author suggests that the unconscious life of traumatised groups is dominated by a fourth basic assumption, which he terms “Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification” or (ba) “I:A/M”. When social systems regress following traumatic experiences of failed dependency, they become like, or actually become groups. “Aggregation” and “Massification” refer to processes through and by which the group becomes either an aggregate or a mass; two bipolar forms of incohesion which are equally incohesive. The members of an aggregate hardly relate to one another. They remain silent for long periods of time, and engage in various forms of non-communication such as gaze-avoidance. Where an aggregate is characterised by too much individuality, a mass is characterised by too little. The term may refer to a highly charged political demonstration or a rally in a confined location. People are so physically close that in any other situation they would be experienced as violating one another’s sense of 86personal space, they are mesmerised through staring into one another’s eyes or focusing on a common object. The mass’ silence differs in quality from that of the aggregate; people feel they do not need words or gestures to communicate, as they are rooted in a shared sense of awe and wonder. These bi-polar intra-psychic constellations are associated with two types of personal organisation:, the “contact shunning” or “crustacean” type as a schizoid reaction against the fear of engulfment; and two, the “merger-hungry” or “amoeboid” as a clinging reaction against the fear of abandonment. The massification of traumatised societies, it is argued, is dominated by processes of fatal purification; massification breeds nationalism and fascism.
