ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic approach to understanding group processes tends to use as its basis experience of intra-psychic processes in the individual, with Wilfred Bion’s work on groups being one of the few notable exceptions. A group state of mind corresponds to Melanie Klein’s description of the depressive position. A well-functioning group or an individual in this state of mind can tolerate, explore and value difference, alternative viewpoints and the tensions and potential for creativity these throw up. In a gang state of mind, the defences and organization of the personality are more akin to the paranoid– schizoid position described by Klein. In it there is a gathering together in a malignant huddle of parts of the personality in a very particular constellation. H. Rosenfeld links the movement towards ganging to the operation within all of us of the forces of the death instinct as described by S. Freud.
