Fantasies and Fairy Tales in Groups and Organizations: Bion's Basic Assumptions and the Deep Roles

Abstract

Little is known about the psychological processes that constitute roles in groups and organizations. Over the last years, however, organizational psychology has demonstrated that unconsciously some people are likely to be pushed into certain social and organizational roles. This article claims that roles found in ordinary folk tales also arise in organizations. From the Bionic concept of organizational basic assumptions, deep roles emerge. Someone in the group becomes ‘;king’;, another ‘devil’, a third ‘clown’, a fourth ‘witch’, etc. Fourteen such deep roles, divided into good and bad, are proposed and their correspondences to each of Bion's three basic assumption groups (dependency, fight-flight, and pairing) are introduced as an expansion of Bion's original theory. This expanded theory is compared to Argyris' and Schön's model for organizational functioning, and it is envisioned that psychoanalytic role theory will be of increased relevance for the understanding of work and organizational life.