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Chapter Two Part Two – Methodology - Page 79
A Group-Analytic Approach to Understanding Learning
Pines (2000) provides an elegant articulation of the link between the psyche and the
social that is at the heart of Foulkes’ theory, based on the difference between cohesion
and coherence. Although cohesion is seen as a core concept in group functioning, Pines
links this to the more ancient and Germanic root of the word group which is linked to
‘crop’, the gizzard of a bird where an agglomeration of substances can be found. These
have lost their individual and discrete nature and are clumped together to form instead a
fibrous mass. Pines argues that one form of group can be seen in the image of individual
elements partly digested and glued together to form a bolus. He suggests that it is
possible to see Bion’s Basic Assumptions (described above, on Page 55) as instances of
powerful group cohesion.
Pines differentiates this cohesion from the form of group pictured by the use of the later
Latin root of the word group, which is connected with the concept of ‘grouping’ as an
active process. In this, objects are actively grouped together to display an organisational
principle of coherence. In a group-analytic small group, meetings take place under
conditions set down and maintained by the conductor as dynamic administrator. These
conditions relate to issues of space, time, reliability, confidentiality, the privilege of
verbal communication over action, and the understanding that people meet together in
order to increase their understanding of themselves and thereby to gain mastery over
their inner lives. These organisational principles are part of the group analyst’s own
mentality, derived from his or her training and position in the training matrix of the
group-analytic community. Pines argues that it is this basic structure which will be
tested over and over again through the life of the group, and which gradually becomes
internalised by the group members themselves, so that in the long run they themselves
become the organisers of the group. Each member of the group comes to occupy the