The Group as a Whole or Acting Out the Missing Leader?

ABSTRACT

To write about a group of individuals is to see them as a single entity for some analytic purpose, even if it is just to label them a group. At issue is the type of unity assumed, its density. The article is concerned with how the consultant or therapist's anxiety may lead him or her to overemphasize the dense wholeness of the group, and so miss a more complex drama, acting out the missing leader, in which members cooperate to create the pieces of a leader who might save them. Not a productive drama, it must be identified before its script can be rewritten.