Bion's Basic Assumptions and the Rise of Populist Figures, Empires and Cultures: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the “Great Leader”

Wilfred Bion's Experiences in Groups (1961) explores group activity through the framework of what he termed the “Work Group” and its functioning. He identified that shared anxieties within a group often lead members to rely on “basic assumptions,” giving rise to one of three “Basic Assumption Groups” within the Work Group: the “Dependent”, “Pairing”, and “Fight-Flight” Groups, each of which can disrupt Work Group functioning. Bion also observed that within the Work Group, a “Specialised Workgroup” may emerge; operating under a set of basic assumptions, to contain (Bion, 1970) the anxieties and projections of the wider group, thereby aiding in its ability to function. He cited the church, the aristocracy, and the army as examples of such Specialised Workgroups in society. This paper will examine how Bion's concepts of Basic Assumption Groups and the three Specialised Workgroups he identified, now diminished in prominence as components of modern society, can help explain the rise of political extremism and tribalism within functional democracies. Bion succinctly captures these ideas in the following passage:

If we consider the specialised workgroups all three are concerned with matters which lie outside [the basic assumption] with which they are primarily concerned. Thus, the specialised workgroup for the dependent basic assumption is not free from preoccupation of Messianic ideas [from] the pairing group… Effort here seems to be devoted to a Messiah born, out of wedlock, in a bed of bulrushes or a manger, with one exalted parent, Pharoah's daughter, or the Deity, and one less exalted. In the pairing group, the aristocratic sub-group allows exalted parents, wedlock and a palatial crib, but the child is only notable in being one with the rest of us…. The fight-flight group expresses a sense of incapacity for understanding and the love without which understanding cannot exist…

(Bion, 1961, pp.160-161)

This paper will demonstrate how Bion's use of symbolic language, such a