A Shriek From the Protomental System: Faint as a result of a failure in containing the group's latent dependency
著者
Med HAFSI
(Meddo hafushi)
社会学部
版
publisher
出版地
奈良
出版者
奈良大学
上位タイトル
奈良大学紀要
(Memoirs of the Nara University).
Vol.31号,
(2003.
03)
,p.235-
252
識別番号
ISSN
03892204
抄録
One of Wilfred Bion's most original conceptsis the "protomental system" (PMS). This, which transcends clinical experience, he defined as a "hypothetical" place in human psyche where in the physical and the psychical are undifferentiated, and where in the non-operative basic assumptions are repressed as a result of aconspiracy between the dominant basic assumption group and the work group. According to the protomental system hypothesis, those repressed basic assumptions would form apsychosomatic "matrix" for psychosomatic diseases, or group diseases. Hence, although this definition suggests a possible link between this matrix and psychosomatic diseases displayed in the group, it is too vague; it does not shed light on the causal relationship between the two. Therefore, in the present study, the author postulated that 1) Bion's theoretical speculation applies also to many psycho-somatic disorders, symptoms, and behaviors observed in groups; and that 2) these disorders, symptoms and behaviors are non-ver-bal proto-mental manifestations of the non-operative and undiferentiated basic assumptions suppressed into the PMS by a rigid coexistence and interaction of the work group and one given dominant basic assumption which the group failed to adequately contain in Bion's terms. In order to illustrate this hypothesis, the author presented a clinical vignette of a D-group, where in a member fainted, as a result of the group and the trainer's inability and unwillingness to contain the protomental needs for dependency she had been expressing on the behalf of the group.
