ABSTRACT
The formation of basic assumptions corresponds to a fundamental, proto-mental activity that may even be prenatally constituted. Basic assumptions have their own distinct goals, e.g. the striving for dependence/independence, fight or flight, or formation of a couple. They are not orientated by knowledge or even science but by magical practices. Basic assumptions have a survival value for the individual and the group. As irrational, fundamental convictions, basic assumptions interconnect the members of every group in an unconscious way. Basic assumptions exist in a more or less conscious way not only in relation to theory and the genesis of disorders but also in relation to the psychoanalytic situation, or attitude, as well as the psychoanalytic process itself.
Our group clearly understood the concept of basic assumptions fairly broadly and openly, namely as a sum of fundamental, explicit and implicit ‘views’, convictions, representations and attitudes, permeated by many kinds of emotions that continually accompany our psychoanalytic work and are constantly present as more or less integrated theories and ‘insights’. It seems that our psychoanalytic procedure is guided by our implicit and explicit basic assumptions. Our technique of listening, understanding and transforming what is reported to us by the patient cannot be thought about independently of theory or basic assumptions, whether these are implicit or explicit.
