Are the Basic Assumptions Basic?

While there is undoubted value in a recognition of Basic Assumption activity in groups and organisations, a concentration on these external phenomena may impose defensive limitations on our capacity to think beyond them. For example, I believe the major underlying anxieties are those inherent in the primitive and preverbal roots of behavior. The underlying principle is the need for the individual, the group and the organisation to survive the forces of nature, competing initially with other species, and, in evolutionary terms with our fellow man. We navigate on the edge of destruction because of the need, not only to survive, but also to evolve.