Deriving a group psychic apparatus and a typology of group mental states from Bion's group dynamics

The interest of psychoanalysts in groups goes back to Freud's late works especially Totem and Taboo (1913 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921 and Civilization and its Discontents (1930. Freud's formulations and hypotheses developed in these works had considerable effect on later psychoanalytic theories on group. The early psychoanalytic theories influenced by Freud (e.g. Bion 1961; Foulkes 1964; Pichon‑Riviere 1971conceive groups as a specific psychical entity (Kaes 1999. Based on Freud's ‑‑ and also Lewin's (1948 1951‑‑ ideas and suggestions they argue that this entity is different by from the mere sum of individual processes but is the result of individual contributions. The members contributes by means of such mental processes such as identification (Freud 1921; Ferenczi 1916 and projective identification (Klein 1946; Bion 1967 their desires their fears their dreams and their respective psychic apparatuses with their contents. Hafsi：A psychic apparatus 85 There is abundant psychoanalytically‑oriented literature which apply Freud's concepts related to his psychic apparatus theory. For instance many researchers often describe phenomena in terms of conscious unconscious ego and superego. However with the exception of Rene Kas's pioneer l'appareil psychic groupal there is to the author's knowledge no study which has discussed explicitly and systematically the group's psychic apparatus. In the present paper the author has attempted to demonstrate that Wilfred Bion has developed a number of concepts such as basic assumption work protomental system group mentality and group culture which bear striking resemblance with those used by Freud in his topographic and structural models. The present study has thus two purposes. The first one is to discuss from a Bionian vertex the author's hypothesis that although Bion did not propose any specific theory of the psychic apparatus his contains fragments of a theory which includes Freud's two representations or models of the individual psychic apparatus. The second purpose was to propose and discuss a general psychopathology and typology of group's mental state derived by the author from Bion's on groups.