Fight-Flight Group
Description
Daniel Tutt explains:
"the psychoanalyst Wilfred R. Bion points out in his studies on groups, political communities form to allow members to flee this sense of persecution. In his Experiences in Groups, Bion describes a similar logic of group belonging, in what he calls the “fight–flight group.” Here, group members identify with a leader by forming a dependency structure that is violent and exclusive. The emergent fight–flight group affirms the zero-sum logic of the capitalist market interior to the group, but it does so on terms that are perceived as fairer and more satisfying than mainstream groups, such as the school, the church, or the army.
In the fight–flight group, the leader plays the role of forming an artificial environment in which the competition of the wider society is reenacted within the group, but on terms that are more transparent. Like the Nietzschean community which affirms the winner-loser myth by active separation and division from those deemed weak or inferior, the fight–flight group does the same thing, but they rely on a leader to enact this separation from the wider society. The fight–flight group thus sustains the winner-loser mythology by rejecting the dominant liberal version and fortifying the community as a perfect alternative to it. Problems inevitably arise within the fight–flight group because the leader, as a savior figure takes it upon himself to perform victoriously against a hostile world. The fight of the group thus becomes the reserve of the leader alone and they leave little to no room for group members to enact their power. This results in the inability of the fight-flight group to satisfy the independence of each member, and they become what Bion refers to as a “dependent group.” A dependent group is formed around a leader whose authority is taken to be benevolent but who remains the only actor within the group that can confront the hostile outside world."