Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego remains a source of insight nearly a century after its publication and despite any misgivings we may have about Freud's theories today. To paraphrase the anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker, Freud often gets the details wrong, but he gets the generalities right. (For example, humans are profoundly repressed creatures, but Becker believed--and I agree--that we're driven primarily by the repression of our fear of death, not of our libidinous impulses.)
Writing in Vienna in 1921 with the horrors of the First World War still fresh, Freud was understandably pessimistic about the impact of the group on the individual:
In a group the individual is brought under conditions which allow him to throw off the repressions of his unconscious instinctual impulses. The apparently new characteristics which he then displays are in fact manifestations of this unconscious, in which all that is evil in the human mind is contained as a predisposition... [1]
In this context Freud's subject would be more accurately described in English as "mass psychology" or "crowd psychology," as translator and editor James Strachey notes. [2] And yet I find that the concepts Freud explores are relevant today not only when applied to political rallies or other large-scale gatherings, but also to the much smaller and better-organized groups that I study on a consistent basis: The workforces and executive teams of the leaders in my coaching practice, most of whom are startup CEOs.
While I'm cautious about drawing this parallel too broadly, many of the social and psychological dynamics discussed by Freud can be observed in organizational life, and contemporary leaders would do well to have a clearer understanding of these concepts in order to manage employees and executives more effectively.
Group Psychology is rich with original thought, but Freud also draws extensively upon prior efforts, and the works he explores most thoroughly are Psychologie des Foules (Psychology of Crowds), by the French polymath Gustave Le Bon, and The Group Mind, by Anglo-American psychologist William McDougall. Freud begins with the recognition that people behave differently when they are members of a group, quoting Le Bon directly:
Whoever be the individuals that compose [a group], however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a group puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in isolation. [3]
This dynamic poses both an opportunity and a dilemma for leaders. The opportunity is that groups are capable of transcending their individual members' capabilities, as Freud notes, paraphrasing Le Bon and others:
Groups are also capable of high achievements in the shape of abnegation, unselfishness, and devotion to an ideal. [4]
In certain circumstances the morals of a group can be higher than those of the individuals that compose it, and...only collectivities are capable of a high degree of unselfishness and devotion... In exceptional circumstances there may arise in communities the phenomenon of enthusiasm, which has made the most splendid achievements possible. [5]
But the dilemma, alluded to above, is that groups so often exert a negative influence on individual behavior. Freud again quotes Le Bon directly:
By the mere fact that he forms part of an organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian--that is, a creature acting by instinct. [6]
While the social experience of organizational life differs immensely from that of an anonymous crowd, groups of employees and executive teams can certainly fall under the sway of a collective impulse that renders them less thoughtful or deliberate. My clients would readily recognize Freud's description of these aspects of the group experience:
A group is impulsive, changeable and irritable. It is led almost exclusively by the unconscious... Nothing about it is premeditated. Though it may desire things passionately, yet this is never so for long, for it is incapable of perseverance. It cannot tolerate any delay between its desire and the fulfillment of what it desires. It has a sense of omnipotence; the notion of impossibility disappears for the individual in a group.
A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. It thinks in images, which call one another up by association (just as they arise with individuals in states of free imagination), and whose agreement with reality is never checked by any reasonable agency. The feelings of a group are always very simple and very exaggerated. [7]
Turning to William McDougall's The Group Mind, Freud acknowledges that different types of groups can have different effects on individuals. McDougall's starting point is the concept of an overarching organizing principle, which Freud paraphrases:
Before the members of a random crowd of people can constitute something like a group in the psychological sense, a condition has to be fulfilled: these individuals must have something in common with one another, a common interest in an object, a similar emotional bias in some situation or other, and..."some degree of reciprocal influence." [8]
The employees and executives in a contemporary organization clearly have the potential to fulfill this condition, although just how to unlock this potential in a given collective is one of the primary challenges I discuss with my clients. Freud notes the importance of emotions here:
The most important result of the formation of a group is the "exaltation or intensification of emotion" produced in every member of it. In McDougall's opinion men's emotions are stirred to a pitch that they seldom or never attain under other conditions; and it is a pleasurable experience for those who are concerned, to surrender themselves so unreservedly to their passions and thus to become merged in the group and to lose the sense of the limits of their individuality. [9]
While this heightened emotionality is undoubtedly at the root of groups' potential destructive power, it's also directly related to groups' ability to uplift the human spirit in the ways described above. The challenge for leaders like my clients is how to harness these feelings without allowing them to run amok. The key, according to McDougall, is create a set of conditions that will raise a group's "collective mental life to a higher level," which Freud articulates (and which I've labelled) as follows [10]:
1. Continuity
The first and fundamental condition is that there should be some degree of continuity of existence in the group. This may be either material or formal: material, if the same individuals persist in the group for some time; and formal if there is developed within the group a system of fixed positions which are occupied by a succession of individuals.
This highlights several tensions inherent in rapidly growing organizations: Early-stage employees' capabilities may not keep pace with the company's growth, resulting in discontinuous group membership as more experienced people are hired. Founders often prefer fluid organizational cultures--that's one reason why they're founders--and may resist solidifying hierarchical structures, such as a formal executive team. [11]
2. Identity
The second condition is that in the individual member of the group some definite idea should be formed of the nature, composition, functions and capacities of the group, so that he may develop an emotional relation to the group as a whole.
In other words: Who are we to each other? And why should we care? A regrettable consequence of the common entrepreneurial impulse to delay formalizing hierarchical structures is that these questions go unanswered, making it more difficult for employees to establish a group identity with their functional colleagues, or for senior leaders to establish a group identity as the executive team.
3. Rivalry
The third [condition] is that the group should be brought into interaction (perhaps in the form of rivalry) with other groups similar to it but differing from it in many respects.
The most effective leaders harness this drive not only against external competitors, but also across functions without losing an overarching sense of camaraderie across the company as a whole. [12]
4. Mythology
The fourth [condition] is that the group should possess traditions, customs and habits, and especially such as determine the relations of its members to one another.
A group's traditions, customs and habits--their collective "mythology"--can play a powerful role in establishing and reinforcing all of the other conditions articulated here.
5. Clarity
The fifth [condition] is that the group should have a definite structure, expressed in the specialization and differentiation of the functions of its constituents.
In other words: Who owns what? How do we define our respective responsibilities? And where there are overlaps or disagreements, who will make the necessary decisions (and how will they be made?) [13]
Each of these concepts comes up on a consistent basis in my coaching practice--they're particularly significant for startup CEOs, who are striving to establish effective groups at multiple levels of the company at once, but they're relevant to every leader who's hoping to harness the power of group experience while mitigating the downsides.
In closing, it's worth noting that even as I support Becker's contention that our fear of death is an even more powerful driver of human behavior than our libido, I find deeply compelling Freud's thesis that the group dynamic is ultimately a form of Eros, which encompasses not only our sexual relationships, but also "love for parents and children, friendship and love for humanity in general...[as] all these tendencies are an expression of the same instinctual impulses" [14]:
We will try our fortune, then, with the supposition that love relationships (or, to use a more neutral expression, emotional ties) also constitute the essence of the group mind... Our hypothesis finds support in the first instance from two passing thoughts. First, that a group is clearly held together by a power of some kind: and to what power could this feat be better ascribed than Eros, which holds together everything in the world? Secondly, that if an individual gives up his distinctiveness in a group and lets its other members influence him by suggestion, it gives one the impression that he does it because he feels the need of being in harmony with them rather than in opposition to them--so that perhaps after all he does it "ihnen zu Liebe" (i.e. "for their sake," but literally "for love of them.") [15]
As I wrote some years ago,
[Good leaders] are passionate, but it's not quite love. The very good ones do feel love--for their team, for the work, for life--but they can't quite bring themselves to say it out loud and fully express the feeling. The great ones feel it, and everyone around them knows it and benefits as a result. [16]
Footnotes
[1] Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, page 9 (Sigmund Freud, 1921)
[2] Page 1
[3] Page 7
[4] Page 15
[5] Page 20
[6] Page 12
[7] Pages 13-14
[8] Page 21
[9] Page 22
[10] Pages 24-25
[11] Pirates in the Navy
[12] Startup Leadership: A Greater Us
[13] Leadership, Decision-Making and Emotion Management
[14] Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, page 29
[15] Page 31
[16] Leading Is an Act of Love
For Further Reading
Huddle Up! (Building Group Cohesion)
Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely)
How Leaders Create Safety (and Danger)
Rules Aren't Norms (On Better Meeting Hygiene)
Photo by Swiss Tchoukball.