Dr Tracy Wallach & Associates

I help leaders, change agents and teams diagnose and transform the dysfunction they see in their organizations. Group relations thinking underlies much of what I do in my coaching and consulting practice, and in my teaching and training.

Role Analysis is a very effective way of helping clients understand a bit more about how they take up their formal and informal roles in their teams and organizations. This video excerpt describes the Metaphor Method of Role Analysis, developed by Green and Molenkamp. The method can be useful for intact work teams, as well as training groups.

The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

I help leaders, change agents and teams diagnose and transform the dysfunction they see in their organizations. Group relations thinking underlies much of what I do in my coaching and consulting practice, and in my teaching and training.

Role Analysis is a very effective way of helping clients understand a bit more about how they take up their formal and informal roles in their teams and organizations. This video excerpt describes a very useful structure I use for doing role analysis in training groups.

The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

This video excerpt offers a approach to working with in organizations.

The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

How is conflict managed or worked with in your organization? Is it avoided or confronted? Does it get worked with productively, swept beneath the surface, or get expressed in a way that creates a toxic environment?

Please contact me for coaching or facilitation services if you or your organization is struggling with managing conflict.

Bion described three kinds of basic assumptions in groups: dependency, fight/flight and pairing.
that speak to the unconscious ways that the group behaves in order to manage its anxiety. In Basic Assumption groups, leaders and followers collude in order to avoid facing painful realities. One way to think about it is as a defense mechanism that serves the whole group.

Since then, other practitioners have theorized new basic assumptions: oneness, me-ness, and purity/pollution. This brief extract describes these basic assumptions.

The 4th basic assumption group, added by Turquet (1974) describes a group where “members seek to join in a powerful union with an omnipotent force, unobtainably high, to surrender self for passive participation, and thereby to feel existence, well-being and wholeness.”

In one-ness groups, members act “totally undifferentiated, as if there is no difference of opinion let alone conflict within the group.” (Green and Molenkamp, 2005). Cult groups reflect this type of basic assumption functioning.

Basic Assumption-- Me-ness was proposed by Lawrence, Bain, and Gould (1996) as a response to social anxieties and fears of living in modern, turbulent society. As a result of this anxiety, an individual is pressed more and more into his or her own inner reality in order to exclude and deny the perceived disturbing realities that are in their outer environment. The group of people meeting in same time and place denies that it is a group. Group is perceived as “contaminating, impure, taboo, and in sum, all that is negative.”

In Me-ness culture, the overriding anxiety is that the individual would be lost in any group that emerges. It is as if each individual was a self¬-contained group acting in its own right.

A sixth basic assumption of purity/pollution, related to the concept of “caste” was proposed by Chattopadhyay in 2019. Caste hierarchies establish the superiority or purity of one dominant group over the other. Basic Assumption Purity/Pollution groups behave as if their survival depends on keeping the higher “pure” group or caste separated from the lower “polluted” ones. With this basic assumption, the “impurities” of the upper caste are projected onto the lower, polluted castes.

The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

Do you see evidence of Basic Assumption behavior in your group or team?

The final component of Systems Psychodynamics or Group Relations Theory is Wilfred Bion’s work on Basic Assumptions. Basic Assumptions speaks to the unconscious of the group-as-a-whole.

On the basic assumption level of functioning, unconscious anxieties of the group lead the group to behave as if certain behaviors are vital to its survival, often to the detriment of its primary task.

Basic assumption groups unconsciously assign leadership to those most able to help the group meet its unconscious survival needs and contain its anxiety.

Basic assumption leaders collude with the group in avoiding reality. If they break this unconscious agreement they may be replaced or evicted.

Bion described three kinds of basic assumptions in groups: dependency, fight/flight and pairing.
that speak to the unconscious ways that the group behaves in order to manage its anxiety. In Basic Assumption groups, leaders and followers collude in order to avoid facing painful realities. One way to think about it is as a defense mechanism that serves the whole group.

The video below offers a brief overview and description of Basic Assumption Pairing (BaP).

Here, the group behaves as if its survival depends on producing a new leader (who may be a person, an institution, or an idea) who will deliver them from their current problems.
The group’s focus may be on some entity in the future as a defense against dealing with the difficulties of the present.

Groups often produce pairs of members who are regarded as if they are potential parents of this new metaphorical Messiah. The group may become inactive as it depends on the pair to do the group’s work. A vague sense of hope replaces practical action in facing current difficulties.

There is a culture of collusion in supporting pairs of members to avoid the truth. (Hayden and Molenkamp, 2004; Palmer and Reed, 1971)
The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

Do you see evidence of Basic Assumption behavior in your group or team?

The final component of Systems Psychodynamics or Group Relations Theory is Wilfred Bion’s work on Basic Assumptions. Basic Assumptions speaks to the unconscious of the group-as-a-whole.

On the basic assumption level of functioning, unconscious anxieties of the group lead the group to behave as if certain behaviors are vital to its survival, often to the detriment of its primary task.

Basic assumption groups unconsciously assign leadership to those most able to help the group meet its unconscious survival needs and contain its anxiety.

Basic assumption leaders collude with the group in avoiding reality. If they break this unconscious agreement they may be replaced or evicted.

Bion described three kinds of basic assumptions in groups: dependency, fight/flight and pairing.
that speak to the unconscious ways that the group behaves in order to manage its anxiety. In Basic Assumption groups, leaders and followers collude in order to avoid facing painful realities. One way to think about it is as a defense mechanism that serves the whole group.

The video below offers a brief overview and description of Basic Assumption Fight/Flight (BaFF).
Here, the group behaves as if there is a danger or an enemy from which it must flee, or which it must attack. It is as if the group’s survival depends upon destroying or evading the enemy (person, institution or idea) which threatens it.

There is a culture of paranoia and aggressive competitiveness.
The group is preoccupied with an enemy, either external or within, and may spend time and energy worrying about rumors of change, or protesting angrily, without actually planning specific actions that progress their work task.

The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

Do you see evidence of Basic Assumption behavior in your group or team?

The final component of Systems Psychodynamics or Group Relations Theory is Wilfred Bion’s work on Basic Assumptions. Basic Assumptions speaks to the unconscious of the group-as-a-whole.

Bion described three basic assumptions: Dependency, fight/flight, and pairing that speak to the unconscious ways that the group behaves in order to manage its anxiety.

In Basic Assumption groups, leaders and followers collude in order to avoid facing painful realities. One way to think about it is as a defense mechanism that serves the whole group.

The video below offers a brief overview and description of Basic Assumption Dependency (BaD).

The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

Do you see evidence of Basic Assumption behavior in your group or team?

The second component of Systems Psychodynamics or Group Relations is Psychoanalytic Theory. One of the most important aspects of this is the idea of the unconscious, that there are things we do, believe or say that are out of our conscious awareness.

One of the unconscious ways we protect ourselves from difficult ideas or emotions is through defense mechanisms, which operate on both individual and group levels. This brief video describes 4 (of many) defense mechanisms that can operate on an individual, group, or organizational context, and can be useful when trying to make sense of what is happening in a group.

The complete video can be found on my YouTube Channel-- .

In the US, we are heading into political season (though these days it seems as though every season is political season), with mid-term elections coming up in November. There is certainly no shortage of projective processes in this context.

What kinds of defense mechanisms do you see operating in your organization?

In my last post, I briefly described . The theory is actually a combination of a few different theories: Psychoanalytic Theory, Open Systems theory, and the work of Wilfred Bion on Basic Assumptions.

This video describes the Open Systems theory component, with an emphasis on the concepts of boundaries and primary task.

The full video can be found on my YouTube channel Group Relations: Theory and Practice.

I help leaders, change agents and teams diagnose and transform the dysfunction they see in their organizations. Group relations thinking underlies much of what I do in my coaching and consulting practice, and in my teaching and training.

Group relations, also known as systems psychodynamics or Tavistock, describes both a theory and a method, or practice. The theory helps us to understand some of the irrational processes that sometimes take hold in groups and interfere with effective functioning.

The Group Relations conference method offers opportunities to learn about and reflect on our own leadership style and approaches to dealing with authority.

This video short offers a brief overview, and I will be posting more over the next few weeks to describe the theory and practice. I’ve devoted an entire YouTube channel Theory and Practice if you are curious to know more.

What kinds of irrational processes do you see in your organization? What have you tried to make things better? Where have you succeeded and where have you failed?

Thanks to the New York Center for the Study of Groups, Organizations and Social Systems for hosting the premier of my new YouTube video and discussion on Critical Race Theory. It takes a stance to understand the current controversy around . The video is now available to the general public on my channel .

Here is a brief excerpt that introduces the subject and controversy. Please go to my YouTube channel to see the video in its entirety.