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1. Bion has evidenced a universal aspect of human psychology which can be adequately observed only in group situations: the individual's tendency to combine instantly and involuntarily with another individual (or with more than one at a time) in sharing a basic-assumption and acting consequently.
A characteristic trait in the behaviour of individuals belonging to a group which follows a basic-assumption, is the use of language for conveying feelings and emotions rather than precise meanings. The concepts of «development» and «learning from experience» are totally alien to a group in the basic-assumption situation; time references such as: before, after, etc., are non-existent. The group members, due to their participation in a certain basic-assumption, lose part of their individually, that is to say: their condition is pheno-menologically indistinguishable from a depersonalization situation.
It is not easy to detect which basic-assumption is active (dependency, pairing or fight-flight). Bion indicates the presence of a distinctive element in the group emotions (e.g. anxiety, fear, love) which differs according to the basic-assumption present: «the modification that feelings suffer in combination in the respective basic-assumption group may arise because the ‘cement’, so to speak, that joins them to each other is guilt and depression in the dependent group, Messianic hope in the pairing group, anger and hate in the fight-flight group» (W. R. Bion, 1961, p. 166).
The three basic-assumptions may be differentiated not only on