"The group, any group, organisation, society, needs and evolves a structure of tasks, roles, procedures, rules, ascribed status (the 'group culture'), in order to contain the anxiety of the unknown and the responses which, unconsciously, are mobilised to defend against that unknown. The unknown is at the same time what is unknown and feared in each of us and what is unknown in the realities we engage with as we live and work."

"Within the group... one can see operating a number of powerful unconscious and unlearned, quasi-instinctive, strategies of evasion and denial... constituting... "group mentality", opposed to the conscious aims, intentions and efforts of individuals."

Making Absences Present: The Contribution of W. R. Bion to Understanting Unconscious Social Phenomena