Social groups potentially enter an acéphalic stage in which the group ‘annihilates’ the leader as a prelude to an unmediated experience of community. Borrowed from social theorist Georges Bataille, the French term ‘acéphale’ signifies the headless, both figuratively and literally, and is invoked to accentuate the disproportionate power relations between our elevated faculties of thought and our base aptitude for sensation and feeling. The identification and discussion of this proposed stage is embellished by case examples of two groups.
BatailleG. (1929) Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927–39. StoeklA. (ed. and trans.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
2.
BatailleG. (1936) ‘Program (Relative to Acephale)’, October.MichelsonA. (ed. and trans.) 1986, pp. 36: 79.
3.
BatailleG. (1967) The Accursed Share, Vol. 1. Transl. by Hurley.R.New York: Zone Books, 1988.
4.
BillowR.M. (2010) Resistance, Rebellion, Refusal in Groups: The 3 Rs. London: Karnac Books.
5.
BlanchotM. (1988) The Unavowable Community, transl. by JorisP.Barrytown: Station Hill Press.
6.
CailloisR. (1938) ‘Brotherhoods, Orders, Secret Societies, Churches’, in HolierD. (ed.), The College of Sociology 1937–39, transl. by WingB.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988, pp. 145–56.
7.
CanettiE. (1993) Crowds and Power. New York: Noonday Press.
8.
CohlerJ.EpsteinL.IssacharoffA. (1977) ‘A Psychoanalytic Evaluation of the Leader-absent or Coordinated Group Therapy Format’, Group1(2): 75–89.
9.
DeCostaL.BuseW.AmdurskyA. (1986) ‘Personal Myths: Living Them and Pretending Them’, Dynamic Psychotherapy4(2): 131–9.
10.
De HeuschL. (1982) The Drunken King, or, the Origin of the State,WillisR. (ed. and transl.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
11.
DurkheimE. (1912) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, transl. by FieldsK.E.New York: Free Press, 1995.
12.
Evans-PritchardE. (1967) The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
FoucaultM. (1977) ‘A Preface to Transgression’ in BouchardD.F. (ed.), BouchardD.F.SimonS. (trans.) Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, pp. 29–52.Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
15.
FreudS. (1912) ‘Totem and Taboo’ in StracheyJ. (ed. and trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud13. London: Hogarth Press, 1974, pp. 1–161.
16.
GirardR. (1977) Violence and the Sacred, transl. by GregoryP.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
17.
HegartyP. (2000) Georges Bataille: Core Cultural Theorist. London: Sage.
18.
KauffmanJ. (1994) ‘Group thanatropics’ in PinesM.SchermerV.L. (eds.) Ring of Fire: Primitive Affects and Object Relations in Group Psychotherapy, pp. 127–47. New York: Routledge.
19.
KristevaJ. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, transl. by RoudiezL.S.New York: Columbia University Press.
20.
MairL. (1972) Introduction to Social Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21.
MitchellA.J.WinfreeJ.K. (eds.) (2009) The Obsessions of Georges Bataille: Community and Communication. Albany: SUNY Press.
22.
NancyJ.L. (1991) The Inoperative Community. ConnorP., (ed.) ConnorP.GarbusL.HollandM.SawhneyS., (trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
23.
NietzscheF. (1887) On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, transl. by KaufmannW.HollingdaleR.J.New York: Random House,1967.
24.
NietzscheF. (1901) The Will to Power, transl. by KaufmannW.HollingdaleR. J.New York: Vintage Books, 1968.
25.
NitsunM. (1996) The Anti-Group: Destructive Forces in the Group and their Creative Potential. New York: Routledge.
26.
NoysB. (2005) ‘Shattering the Subject: Georges Bataille and the Limits of Therapy’, European Journal of Psychotherapy, Counselling, and Health7(3): 125–36.
27.
PhillipsA. (1997) Terrors and Experts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
28.
RachmanA.W. (2003) ‘Issues of Power, Control, and Status in Group Interaction: From Ferenczi to Foucault’, Group27 (2/3): 89–105.
29.
RachmanA.W.WolfA. (1999) ‘An Experimental Group Experience with a Silent Group Leader’, Issues: Journal of Postgraduate Centre for Mental Health Group Therapy Alumni Association13: 15–31.
30.
SimmelG. (1908) ‘The Secret Society’, in WolffK.H. (ed. and transl.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press, 1950, pp. 345–76.
31.
WolfA. (1949–1950) ‘Psychoanalysis in Groups’, American Journal of Psychotherapy3(4): 16–50; 4(1): 535–58.
32.
WolfA.SchwartzE.K. (1960) ‘Psychoanalysis in Groups: The Alternate Session’, American Imago17.
