Chaotic Group Experience

The chaotic group presents its members with the most primitive workplace experience of the four groups, thereby provoking the most psychologically defensive response of the three psychologically defensive group experiences. The following discussion points out the many interactive aspects of this experience that tend to be mutually supportive thereby creating a reinforcing circularity.

The chaotic group acts “as if” there is a lack of effective leadership within the group (organization) and that there is no clear agenda or task for the group to work on although some members may occasionally point out that these are present at least to some degree. Direction may be only minimally provided or not followed if offered. Phrases like “too many bulls in the china shop” and “ herding a group of cats” express experience in this chaotic setting. Group members appear to be uncertain as to what to do and how to act. This lack of direction and purpose leads to the experience of the group as fragmented and lacking cohesion. This outcome makes most of its members feel anxious about their experience of the group. The group essentially acts as though “doing nothing” is an option. There does not appear to be any compelling reason to accomplish work within this experiential context as time seems to have stopped and external events are not taking place.

These experiences frequently lead to a lack of member self-individuation. Everyone just wants to blend in. This usually takes the form of avoiding participation such as performing work or offering information or direction. In fact there are many indications that self-individuation not only is experienced as personally dangerous but also is actively suppressed by some group members. Those who do speak up to offer direction often seem to be speaking into a vacuum where their words go unheard by most group members. Their efforts, in a sense, fall upon deaf ears. In this context, if a group member or perhaps the nominal leader of the group persists in trying to provide direction, the individual may ultimately find him- or herself the focus of the group’s anxieties, fears, frustrations and anger. As a result those who offer direction find themselves being interviewed by group members as to their intentions, motivations and experience. They may be quizzed about all aspects of their point of view, and their leadership challenged by a few who also aspire to lead the group. Why is he or she advocating this point of view? Why does he or she feel empowered to do this? What credentials does he or she have to make such an assertion? In general anyone observing these group dynamics including its members is discouraged from self-individuation that attracts attention to one’s self. It just seems too dangerous.

These group dynamics predictably lead group members to experience themselves as cut off from themselves, their skills, their work, and from each other. These threatening and frustrating elements of group experience frequently evoke hostility that is expressed in many directions and many different forms. Hostility may then be directed toward fellow group members who are hiding out in the group by not saying anything (avoiding self-individuation). Not contributing, therefore, becomes dangerous. The group as a whole may also be attacked for being incompetent to do anything. The nominal group leader may be criticized and challenged for not doing anything to allay anxiety arising from distressing group experience. Even those outside of the group who are thought to be responsible for creating the group and assigning it work may be attacked.

The circular reinforcing nature of chaotic group experience may, at this point, be observed to have been established. Group members behave in an aimless, perhaps joking or escapist manner to relieve anxiety. This further reduces the group’s productivity, adding to the threat the group may not succeed. Group members are not supportive of each other and are combative regarding each other’s needs for security and self-esteem. Group members are all in the same boat and it may be easier to go down together than face each other and the situation. The group may gradually lose touch with important aspects of its task environment as members of the group withdraw from accomplishing assigned work.

Alienation, anxiety and hostility abound. This chaotic, uncertain and threatening group experience may also be inspected from a depth psychology perspective. In psychological terms, experience of this nature promotes primitive forms of aggression. Oral sadistic and incorporative hunger for objects ( interpersonal connectedness) creates anxiety over safety. Group members paradoxically feel that they need others while simultaneously fearing that they will consume their friends as well as be consumed by them. As a result there gradually emerges a great hunger for relatedness that is at the same time threatening to everyone.

One outcome of these group dynamics is that group members seek safety by psychologically and sometimes physically dropping out of the group. Members may withdraw from active participation while denying their feelings of frustration, aggression and fears that group members may devour them. Paradoxically, the greater their desire (hunger) for interpersonal relatedness within the group, the greater the likelihood others will feel unbalanced by the threat of being devoured by those in need. This experience results in an increasing interpersonal defensiveness to avoid being used by others to meet their affiliation needs to feel connected and good about themselves.

Groups that contain these conditions accomplish little work. The unacknowledged primary task becomes one of personal survival that is made all the more difficult as members withdraw from each other and active participation in the group. Few opportunities for interpersonal support exist at a time when supporting each other is most needed. Members often experience themselves as neither in nor out of the group, and may express considerable ambivalence about the group and their participation in it. Most members seem to be unable to commit to group participation while at the same time they are unable to separate from the group at the risk of annihilation by the group or a superior who assigned them to work in the group.