ABSTRACT
Our experiences of being and working in groups are often powerful and overwhelming. We experience the tension between the wish to join together and the wish to be separate; between the need for togetherness and belonging and the need for an independent identity. Many of the puzzling phenomena of group life stem from this, and it is often difficult to recognise the more frequent reality of mutual interdependence. No man is an island, and yet we wish to believe we are independent of forces of which we may not be conscious, either from outside ourselves or from within. At times we are aware of these pulls within ourselves; at other times they overwhelm us and become the source of irrational group behaviour. This chapter explores the application of Wilfred Bion’s basic assumption theory to the dynamics of groups and the difficulties of cooperation in multidisciplinary teams where different professions mobilise different basic assumptions.
