Response To Kenneth Eisold

Dear Sir

I found Dr Eisold’s response (IJPA, 78: 823) to my letter very disappointing. To begin with, he failed to address my major concern regarding the simplest way one could account for the schism in Freud’s Viennese Society, and by extension, in the psychoanalytic movement, in general. He chose, instead, to ascribe to me a theoretical position of being ‘relatively unaware of complex group processes involving the entire group’. This is ironic, since I have repeatedly written, for over half a century, about ‘the inseparability of individual and of group dynamics in their interpersonal, intrapsychic, and group-as-a-whole dimensions’ (Scheidlinger, 1997, p. 146; ‘Group dynamics and group psychotherapy revisited: four decades later’, Int. J. Group Psychother., 47: 141- 159). In addition, I had even subjected Bion’s ‘group dynamics’ to detailed critical scrutiny (Scheidlinger, ed., 1980, Psychoanalytic Group Dynamics: Basic Readings, Madison, CT: Int. Univ. Press).

There is no support for Eisold’s claim that Bion’s group theories have ‘been verified and extended in countless circumstances’. As noted by Horwitz (1993, ‘Group-centered models of group psychotherapy’ in Comprehensive Group Psychotherapy, Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, pp. 156-165, ed. H. I. Kaplan and B. J. Sadock), psychodynamically geared group therapists have generally abandoned Bion’s formulations for more eclectic approaches. These theories continue to hold sway, however, with the so-called ‘Tavistock (A. K. Rice) Group Relations Conferences’, which are designed to train human services professionals in group processes (Rioch, 1970, ‘The work of Wilfred Bion on groups’, Psychiat., 33: 56-66).

I continue to believe that our field is not well served when relatively commonplace phenomena such as authoritarian leadership behavior is explained by Bion through Melanie Klein’s intricate ideations such as ‘psychotic’ anxieties or ‘part-object’ fantasies. Interestingly, Bion ceased his interest in groups in his l