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David Mathew
members of staff frightened. Far from reducing them to unproductive emotional jelly, cyberbullying is
used as a means of lowering staff morale and robbing employees of belief in themselves and in their
skills, which results in the employee working harder to prove his place. Counterintuitively, perhaps,
the damage works in a fashion that increases the propensity for taking on extra tasks: to begin with, at
least. After a while, the pressure builds, and the victim either crumples or tries to achieve against
(deliberately) impossible goals as way of securing his manager's receding favour. The victim's
inevitable submission to psychological impacts such as stress, anxiety, a failure of concentration, are
used as spurs to induce more work. Physiological impacts such as heart rate increases, blood
pressure changes, sweating, shortness of breath, headaches, and so on, are regarded as clear signs
that the victim was not the equal of the challenge in the first place.
Traditionally cyberbullying has taken the form of threats and intimidation, impersonation, stalking,
defamation of character, rejection, and the unauthorised (and unwanted) publication of private
material. The workplace cyberbully will not have such tactics at his or her disposal. Something more
subtle, and arguably more insidious, must be employed. And while an email written in an
exaggeratedly formal style that is completely out of character might not sound like cyberbullying, if the
style of such a message is repeated fifteen times a day, from a manager who sits in the same office
as the victim, and if the messages are copied to most of the senior management team, the cumulative
impact constitutes a case of bullying. For although it is fair to say that bullying in general is a matter of
impact and not intent (i.e. if I think I am being bullied then I am being bullied, irrespective of your
original intentions), the case in question relied on such techniques to such an extent that the victim
believed that nearly everyone had been turned against him through fear of the manager.
Increasing anxiety makes the victim feel isolated among his peers. Inadvertently (perhaps), the
bystanders of cyberbullying become perpetrators themselves, their collective misdemeanours
compounded of ignorance and inaction. Before long it is entirely plausible that these accessories will
enjoy the scapegoating of one individual as much as the originator of the offensive material does. The
fact that scapegoating is generally interpreted as a defence against psychological distress in groups is
therefore pertinent: in a failing team in a ‘poisoned department’, the respite from group anxiety takes
the form of making fun of a figure of fresh hatred, whether or not he has done anything to upset
anybody. His perceived tolerance of the accumulated ‘jokes’ and rebukes via email (for example) are
sufficient provocation to continue. As Wilfred Bion (1961) writes in Experiences in Groups: ‘there is
no way in which the individual can, in a group, “do nothing” – not even by doing nothing’ (p118).
This is one way of paraphrasing part of Sigmund Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the
Ego (1921), in which Freud explores group formation and the giving up of individual ego ideals for the
group ideal. With reference to the emotional homogeneity of cyberbullying, one might argue that
something analogous is taking place. Referencing Bion himself, in ‘The unconscious at work in groups
and teams’ (1994), Jon Stokes describes such a ‘basic assumption dependency’ team (Bion 1961)
perfectly: ‘there is little capability to bear frustration… and quick solutions are favoured… members
have lost their capacity to stay in touch with reality and its demands. Other external realities are also
ignored or denied… instead of seeking information, the group closes itself off from the outside world
and retreats into paranoia. A questioning attitude is impossible; any who dare to do so are regarded
as either foolish, mad or heretical’ (p22-23). Thus the question might be begged at this point: is there
actually a need for bullying in the workplace? Perhaps the fact that cyberbullying becomes pandemic
says more about the group than it does the bully (or the victim). In this case, does cyberbullying serve
a function? Perhaps it helps contain workplace anxiety as well as create it? Even if these hypotheses
are correct, however, they do not help the victims. And this being said, this is a good point to
introduce Rob, who is the victim in the following case.
2. The wolf who cried boy?
Rob is a thirty-five year old professional man who was subjected to eighteen months of systematic
workplace bullying at an institution for further education. Before the bullying began, he had spent a
contented year at the Institution; the change in the working dynamics between Rob and his older
female manager changed gradually, from positive to negative, and followed no impetus of which Rob
is aware. Not once in the past had Rob experienced problems with a manager. Rob is a hard worker
and prides himself of being thought of favourably in the workplace; and while the manager had a
reputation of being troubled by the greater intelligence of others, Rob had always assumed that
although he was better educated, he and his manager had had a reasonable working relationship.
However, as time progressed, the feedback that Rob received from his manager was increasingly
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