Groupthink: A Problem of Pain

The desire to avoid effort - or pain - makes people vulnerable to groupthink. How comforting it can seem, to surrender your doubts and relax with a warm, welcoming group, under a benevolent leader who will do all of the hard thinking for you, praise you when you praise him or her, and tell you how to live.

Unfortunately, in life there is no 'painless' option. We can only choose between acute pain and chronic pain, between pain now or pain postponed.

The pain of choosing groupthink is equivalent to choosing the chronic pain of continuing to remain in relationship with an abuser. They are essentially the same choice, since so often groupthink is actively established as a means of control, and so many 'controllers' are, or will become, in one way or another, abusive. This pain may be easily ignored at first, but over time it will increase, either because of increasing awareness or because of the increasing amount of emotional/psychological self-mutilation that is required to preserve a lack of awareness. [Yes, consciously chosen denial is a form of emotional self-mutilation. Please think seriously about that.]

The pain of rejecting groupthink is equivalent to choosing the acute pain of leaving a cult or an abusive spouse. Again they are essentially the same choice. This pain will be acute, and probably quite intense. There may be risks involved. No wonder it is so often feared. No wonder people shrink from it.

Choosing the acute form is like choosing surgery; there is a great deal of pain, even risk, at the outset, then a period of healing during which there is still pain, vulnerability, tenderness. There may be permanent loss. There may be permanent adjustments required in one's manner of living. The person will never be 'really' the same... but this is because something pathological, possibly even malignant, has been excised. The pain, the change, are the price of healing.

Choosing the chronic form is like choosing to live with a chronic, debilitating condition - for which there is a cure, albeit a radical and painful one. Abuse is progressive [see Patricia Evans for a discussion of this] - it cannot be contained, it cannot be stabilized. It escalates when enabled or tolerated, like alcoholism, like other addictions, like chronic debilitating diseases. More and more accommodation is required, more and more pressure is applied. One must deny and deny. Eventually, the distortion in thinking and feeling, the emotional and physical exhaustion from constant denial and coping, will do far more damage than the most radical surgery would have done. And there is no healing, no rest, no relief. The pathology remains and continues to feed. Ultimately, if sufficiently severe, it will destroy.