Hope

Zinberg, N., Boris, H., and Boris, M., Teaching Social Change, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

ZINBERG AND THE BORISES are to be congratulated for their finely honed work on group process, inspired by Bion, the psychoanalyst who has had such a profound influence at the Tavistock Institute in London, and the A.K. Rice Institute in Washington, D.C. In a less noticeable way, it is also a study of hope itself to which Harold Boris has directed considerable psychoanalytic research (Boris, 1976). It is exemplified here in the specific hopes for teaching social change expressed by various members of the Ford Foundation, school superintendents, teachers and students who contributed to the lessons of this book.

Bion noticed early in his career, while in military service, that regardless of the task that groups of people undertook as a group there were roughly three basic assumption tendencies that interfered with the effectiveness of the group in collaborating towards the accomplishment of that task: namely, a tendency toward dependency in which the group assumes there is something outside of what it does that it must relate to in order to gain the kind of security an immature organism, such as an infant or child, requires; also a tendency to fight or flight assuming that the preservation of the group requires it to be led by the leader or a member towards fighting something or someone or fleeing from something or someone within or outside of the group itself. And, lastly, a tendency toward pairing assuming that out of interaction between some two members of the group would emerge a salvation protecting, preserving and enhancing the group—like a savior or Messiah.

Zinberg and the Borises describe in considerable detail (in fact it makes up a good portion of the book), the ways in which their project developed. The book is a report of this project—three types