ABSTRACT
This chapter picks up some of the themes to probe the understanding of collective behaviour and emotionality in groups making use of the idea of a "group skin". This probe seeks to understand aspects of the relationship between what is bodily and what is emotional that have been drawn together under Bion's concept of protomentality. In 1961, Bion analyses the way groups appear to have a tacit set of common assumptions, shared unconsciously, which shape emotional experience. Earl Hopper has attempted to unify these two developments to basic assumption (baO and baM) thinking by suggesting that both dynamics belong to systems that are characterised by having been traumatised. Hinshelwood has described three types of psycho-social container of emotional experiences in individuals and groups, rigid, flexible, and fragile. In the case of ba oneness, relatedness across the skin of the group is designed to evacuate primitive trauma and feelings associated with annihilation.
