Role suction is a term introduced in the United States by Fritz Redl in the mid-20th century to describe the power of a

social group In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...

to allocate roles to its members. W. R. Bion's group dynamics further explored the ways whereby the group (unconsciously) allocates particular functions to particular individuals in order to have its covert emotional needs met; and the process has recently been highlighted anew within the

systems-centered therapy Systems-centered therapy (SCT) is a particular form of group therapy based on the Theory of Living Human Systems developed by Yvonne Agazarian. The theory postulates that living human systems survive, develop, and transform from simple to compl ...

Yvonne Agazarian Yvonne M. Agazarian (February 17, 1929 - October 9, 2017) was the principal architect of systems-centered therapy, based on a theory of Living Human Systems that she also developed. Agazarian taught, trained, and supervised systems-centered therap ...

. Among regularly occurring group roles are those of the

scapegoat In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed. The concept first appears in the Book of Leviticus, in which a goat is designa ...

for the group's troubles; the joker; the peacemaker; the critic/spokesperson for group standards; the idol, or upholder of the group ideal; and the

identified patient Identified patient (IP) is a clinical term often heard in family therapy discussion. It describes one family member in a dysfunctional family who expresses the family's authentic inner conflicts. Usually, the "designated patient" expresses their ...

. In mixed gender groups, women may be disproportionately pressured by role suction into playing a nurturing/peacemaker role.

Driving forces

The ease whereby people pick out those who play complementary

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, and the psychological splitting of good and bad help fuel such role differentiation. Behind role suction, such forces as

projective identification Projective identification is a term introduced by Melanie Klein and then widely adopted in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Projective identification may be used as a type of defense, a means of communicating, a primitive form of relationship, or a ro ...

and

countertransference Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client. Early formulations The phenomenon of countertransference (german: G ...

have been singled out as operating at an unconscious level in the group. Role lock – confirming mutual suction into complementary roles, such as victim and abuser – is ensured by the intermeshing of projective identifications.

Wider systems

The British anti-psychiatrists explored the theme of group suction in connection with role attribution in the family

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, as well as with the allocations of roles in the wider social system, David Cooper suggesting that 'there are always good or bad, loved or hated 'mothers' and 'fathers', older or younger 'brothers' and 'sisters'...in any institutional structure”. A wider variety of roles can however be found in organizational life, the person-in-role acting as a container for the (unconscious) group forces.

Role of the therapist

Bion has described his experience as a group therapist when he "feels he is being manipulated so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognize, in ''somebody else's'' phantasy...a temporary loss of insight, a sense of experiencing strong feelings, and at the same time a belief that their existence is quite adequately justified by the objective situation". Bion's work has also been used to illustrate the part played by role suction in the selection of group leaders – dependent groups favouring narcissistic leaders, the fight/flight group paranoids.

R. D. Laing Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of ...

considered that a central part of the therapist's job was "not to allow himself to collude with the patients in adopting a position in their phantasy-system: and, alternatively, not to use the patients to embody any phantasy of their own" – to resist role suction. Later therapists however have explored how a measure of adaptation to patients' role suction – a degree of role responsiveness – can be a useful element in the therapeutic use of the

Criticism

From the point of view of systems centered therapy, the debate relates to the interface between a personal system and the psycho-dynamics of social systems themselves. Debate has arisen about how far the group ''imposes'' roles, and how far the individual's own personality goes to meet the group halfway. Earl Hopper has used the term personification to challenge Redl's concept, suggesting instead that group roles reflect the underlying personality of the individual involved. However, Kibel objects that in many cases the roles imposed are in fact ego-dystonic; with others pointing to how personal tendencies combine with group expectations with varying degrees of fit.McRael/Short, p. 84

References

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External links

Robert M. Young, “Mental space and group relations”
Psychoanalytic theory Role status