ABSTRACT
The previous chapter illustrated how a focus on the defensive basic assumption group (dependency, pairing and fight/flight) made it difficult to maintain a focus on the working group. The ‘sophisticated’ structure of the working group is characterised by a belief that the effort of work is necessary and worthwhile. Such a belief is perhaps exemplified by teachers’ exhortations that their students ‘think about it’, as if thinking were entirely under conscious control. Bion explains that particular ideas are important to the existence of the working group:
[T]he idea of ‘development’ rather than ‘full equipment by instinct’ [is] an integral part of [the working group], but so is the idea of a rational or scientific approach to problem solving. So also, as an inevitable concomitant of the idea of ‘development’, is accepted the validity of learning by experience.
