ABSTRACT
In this chapter I address two matters. The first is myth. I will try to demonstrate how it can develop over time out of something personal, the private psychomythology unique to each individual, into a more public or group form. Once there has been a ‘public-ation’ of the myth, in this case within a therapy group, it becomes available for work, in the sense of the unconscious phantasies that are at its source being recognised and even modified. I will explore the way in which an individual’s mythology can be linked to universal dilemmas, recognisable by other members of the immediate group and sometimes by society at large. My second interest is also linked with Bion’s approach to the function of myth. I want to try to describe the conditions that provoke or promote a transition in the group from a situation in which the work group (WG) is dominant to one in which no work is taking place, and basic assumptions (BAs) are in the ascendant – and then to do the same for the cycle in reverse, where work becomes possible once more. Here too myth, as the pictorial or verbal and often ‘realized’ version of the ‘unobservable realities’ 1 of the human mind, has a part to play.
