Mobbing Revisited Through Psychological Debts: Group Paranoid Dynamics, the Crisis of Place, and Integrative Contextual Intervention

 

MIDORI INSIGHTS (N°1 FEBRUARY 2026)

Mobbing Revisited Through Psychological Debts: Group Paranoid Dynamics, the Crisis of Place, and Integrative Contextual Intervention

Why workplace collective harassment is a systemic symptom – and how to address it differently

Matthieu Poirot, Social Psychologist, PhD in Management Sciences

Founder of Midori Consulting – www.midori-consulting.eu

Introduction: From Blaming Individuals to Understanding the System

In 2014, I published an initial article on mobbing – the phenomenon of collective harassment described by Heinz Leymann in the 1980s, whereby a group ultimately excludes one of its own members by designating them as a scapegoat. At the time, my analysis primarily drew on René Girard’s work on the scapegoat mechanism and the clinical observations gathered from my field interventions. Twelve years later, having accompanied over two hundred organizational crisis situations, I can see how much that initial perspective, while accurate, remained incomplete.

What I have learned since then is that mobbing is almost never an isolated phenomenon. It is the symptom of a deeper relational pathology, rooted in what I now call organizational psychological debts. More precisely, mobbing sits at the convergence of three dynamics that my recent research has enabled me to model: the accumulation of debts of place(the question of who is legitimate within the collective), the emergence of a group paranoid dynamic (the compulsive search for someone to blame in order to evacuate collective suffering), and the rupture of the psychological contractbinding the individual to their organization.

This article offers a thorough re-reading of mobbing through the lens of Integrative Contextual Intervention® (ICI®), the methodology I have developed to regulate complex psychosocial crises in organizations. The aim is not only to understand why a group comes to destroy one of its own, but above all to open pathways for intervention that go beyond merely sanctioning perpetrators or protecting the victim – even though both actions are necessary.

1. What We Already Knew: The Scapegoat Mechanism

Let us briefly recall the fundamentals. Mobbing, as defined by Leymann, refers to a prolonged series of hostile behaviors by a group toward a target person, aimed at their exclusion. Back in 2014, I had identified five situations likely to foster the emergence of mobbing: behavioral rigidity in the target, chronic group overload, deviant work practices, the presence of a toxic leader, and the target’s membership in a minority. These factors remain relevant. But they describe the conditions of emergence of the phenomenon without illuminating its deeper engine.

What René Girard had perfectly identified was the function of the scapegoat: it enables the group to restore its cohesion by diverting its internal violence toward a single target. The threat that the scapegoat supposedly carries unites the others in a victim position that tightens ranks. This dynamic is all the more powerful because the group sees itself as the victim of the scapegoat, perceived as guilty, which legitimizes the exclusion.

I had also observed that the process unfolds in four phases – from hidden bullying to final exclusion – and that its effectiveness stems directly from the group’s inability to recognize the gravity of its actions. Mobbing is a collective blind spot: everyone can identify the scapegoat in a group they don’t belong to, but remains blind to the aggression circulating within their own group.

What I did not yet understand at the time was what fuels this machine. Where does the destructive energy come from? Why do some organizations produce it massively while others contain it? And above all: how can we intervene not only on the symptom (mobbing) but also on the dynamic that generates it?

2. Psychological Debts: The Invisible Fuel of Mobbing

My work over the past decade has led me to formulate a theoretical hypothesis that considerably changes the picture. Mobbing does not arise from nothing. It takes root in an accumulation of psychological debts that the organization has failed to regulate.

What is a psychological debt? It is what emerges when the implicit psychological contract between an individual and their organization is broken. When someone commits to a collective, there is a tacit exchange: I give my time, my energy, my expertise; in return, I receive more than a salary – I receive a sense of reality, social identity, and usefulness. When this contract is repeatedly broken without ever being named or repaired, debts accumulate silently. Like financial debts, interest compounds. One day, the system can no longer pay and enters crisis.

I have modeled these debts along three structural dimensions, which I call the three ICI® pillars:

Time: What Was Never Ritualized

Organizations that produce mobbing are often amnesic organizations. Unritualized departures, past crises swept under the carpet, leadership changes imposed without collective processing create what I call organizational ghosts: undigested events that continue to haunt the present. When the organization no longer knows where it came from, it cannot project forward. This temporal stagnation creates fertile ground for designating culprits: if nothing moves forward, it must be someone’s fault.

Justice: What Was Never Acknowledged

Eighty percent of the organizational conflicts I have encountered have at their root an untreated sense of injustice. Unkept promises, invisible contributions, a disproportionate burden always carried by the same people: when the asymmetry of sacrifices is never acknowledged, it breeds a silent anger seeking an outlet. The scapegoat becomes that outlet: the person onto whom the accumulated debt can finally be discharged. It is no coincidence that mobbing often targets individuals perceived as “privileged” or “protected by management”: the target crystallizes the group’s sense of injustice.

Place: What Was Never Clarified

This is the dimension most directly linked to mobbing, and the one my recent research has most enriched. In any system, each person occupies a defined place, which tells them whether they are useful (recognition of contribution) and desirable (social status). When that place becomes blurred, contested, or threatened, a loyalty crisis sets in: people no longer know to whom or to what they belong. The designation of a scapegoat is then a desperate attempt by the group to redefine its boundaries. There is “us” and “him.” This distinction, however cruel, restores an identity clarity that the organization was no longer providing.

3. The Group Paranoid Dynamic: When Collective Suffering Becomes a Conspiracy Theory

This is where my recent work brings, I believe, the most innovative insight. What I observe in the field, and what I have formalized in my forthcoming book on psychological debts (2026), is the existence of a specific mechanism that I call the group paranoid dynamic.

A work collective is not merely a group of people who produce. It is a meaning-making system that seeks to construct a coherent representation of the world. When psychological debts accumulate – when time is no longer ritualized, justice is no longer rendered, each person’s place is no longer clear – people develop a form of collective paranoid thinking. This is what the literature calls collective rumination: the excessive social sharing of negative experience within the organization. Through successive exchanges, an organizational conspiracy theory gradually takes shape, articulated around a triptych:

“They think we are socially insignificant. Someone is doing this on purpose. The organization is inherently toxic.”

This narrative construction, as Luigi Zoja has remarkably analyzed in his work on paranoia, steers the group no longer toward seeking solutions, but toward seeking a culprit. The implicit question structuring the collective is no longer “how do we solve our problems?” but “who must we burn at the stake to make them pay for our psychological debts?”

The paranoid dynamic presents three characteristics that make it particularly devastating.

The Inversion of Reality

The group’s implicit leader – the one who crystallizes and carries the collective psychological debts – performs a remarkable inversion of facts. Zoja shows that paranoid logic allows for a prestige rent: one becomes the hero fighting against the system’s injustice. Concretely, this translates into a circular mechanism: I ensure the organization fails in its improvement projects, which provokes an authority response, which “proves” there really is a conspiracy. The violence exercised becomes legitimate because it “protects” the group. The aggressor genuinely experiences themselves as a victim – and it is precisely this sincerity that makes the paranoid discourse quasi-rational for anyone who lacks an alternative analytical framework.

The Infrahumanization of the Target

The paranoid dynamic induces what social psychology calls a process of infrahumanization. The other – the scapegoat – is denied the right to belong to the group’s humanity. They are deemed “beneath” it. This mechanism, documented in Jacques-Philippe Leyens’s research, explains why perpetrators do not perceive themselves as such. The dehumanization of the target authorizes aggression without guilt, and this is what makes mobbing so psychologically devastating for the person targeted: they are struck at the very core of their sense of existing.

Systemic Contamination

One of my most concerning observations is that the paranoid dynamic does not remain confined to the initiating group. It contaminates various levels of the organization. Employee representatives may side with the persecutors. HR departments, alerted belatedly, often stigmatize the target, because the latter has already begun reacting clumsily under the effects of post-traumatic stress. The harassment investigation, if conducted without systemic understanding, paradoxically ends up reinforcing the exclusion. The organization, by seeking an individual culprit, reproduces exactly the mechanism it claims to be combating.

4. The Crisis of Place: The Neglected Dimension of Mobbing

If I had to identify the primary contribution of my recent work to understanding mobbing, it would be this: collective harassment is, in its deep structure, a pathology of place.

The notion of “place,” as I use it within the ICI® framework, is multidimensional. It encompasses role clarity (who does what in the organization), the sense of belonging (am I wanted in this collective), professional legitimacy (is my competence recognized), and the affective bond with the institution (do I recognize myself in this place). When one or several of these dimensions falter, a profound existential insecurity takes hold.

Mobbing comes precisely to “resolve” this insecurity through a brutal act of clarification: by excluding someone, the group redefines its boundaries. As I wrote back in 2014, the scapegoat threatens the clarity of boundaries between the group’s inside and outside. What I add today is that this threat is not necessarily real: it is projected. It is because the group no longer knows who it is that the target becomes threatening. It is because the boundaries are already blurred that the scapegoat appears to threaten them.

Exclusion as a Vicious Circle

My clinical observations reveal a particularly pernicious self-reinforcing cycle. Relational exclusion leads to a loss of place within the organization, which weakens the target’s professional identity, amplifying their existential insecurity, generating defensive dysfunctional behaviors (aggression, withdrawal, over-control), which in turn reinforce the exclusion. This vicious circle explains why HR departments, when alerted, tend to stigmatize the target: they only see the reactive behaviors, not the dynamic that produced them.

The Loyalty Conflict as an Aggravating Factor

A key concept in my theoretical framework is the loyalty conflict. It arises when a person faces two loyalty debts directed at others who are explicitly in conflict. For instance, an internally promoted manager finds themselves torn between loyalty to their former colleagues and loyalty to their new role. If they cannot clarify this dual belonging, they may themselves become the target of mobbing – not because they are incompetent, but because they embody an ambiguity of place that the group can no longer tolerate. I have observed this mechanism in numerous situations, including mergers where the former leader was replaced without ritualization: the successor inherits an organizational ghost and becomes, despite themselves, the target of debts accumulated under the previous era.

 

5. What Classical Approaches Miss

If mobbing is a systemic symptom, then purely individualizing responses are doomed to fail – or worse, to aggravate the problem. Three traps threaten organizations facing this reality.

The Psychologization Trap

The internality norm – the tendency to explain behaviors primarily through personality – is the most widespread trap. The standard harassment investigation seeks to identify who is at fault, rarely to understand what system produced the situation. The target is labeled “fragile,” “difficult,” or “paranoid” (tragic irony), and the relational context that generated the decompensation is obscured. As I systematically remind in my interventions: many dysfunctional behaviors are in fact normal human reactions to a social environment that is itself dysfunctional.

The Excessive Juridicization Trap

The harassment investigation, when conducted as a quasi-judicial procedure, transforms the psychologist into a prosecutor. It makes all actors insecure, amplifies the paranoid logic (since it confirms there really are villains and victims), and introduces private justice into the organization. Certainly, the legal dimension is indispensable – workplace harassment is a criminal offense. But the legal response, if not supported by systemic understanding, merely displaces the problem.

The Technical Resolution Trap

Changing the organizational chart, redefining job descriptions, reorganizing the department: so many technical responses to what is fundamentally an adaptive challenge, to use Ron Heifetz’s essential distinction. Mobbing does not disappear because the protagonists have been separated. It disappears when the collective has been able to process the debts that produced it. Without this work of elaboration, the dynamic will reconstitute itself – with a new scapegoat.

6. The Contribution of Integrative Contextual Intervention®

Faced with the complexity of the phenomenon, I have developed a specific intervention approach that addresses the limitations of classical methods. ICI® rests on five fundamental principles.

First Principle: Context First

Belonging to a collective that provides existential security constitutes the primary factor determining people’s engagement and vitality at work. Time, Justice, and Place are the three pillars of an effective collective. The intervention therefore aims first to understand how the organizational system has failed to support people’s sense of existing, and what psychological debts have accumulated as a consequence. This contextual reading does not absolve anyone of their individual responsibilities, but it replaces behaviors within their relational ecology.

Second Principle: Radical Ethical Equidistance

Intervening in a mobbing situation requires taking no one’s side while acknowledging everyone’s suffering. This stance is not soft neutrality. It is a rigorous discipline that recognizes that fault is always shared in complex systems, and that the intervener’s role is not to judge but to reveal the dynamics. The organization does not need a vigilante but a lucid mirror. If the CEO asks me “who is right?”, I answer: “everyone and no one. Let me show you the systemic dynamic.”

Third Principle: Naming Debts Without Blaming

The ICI® restitution does not produce a list of grievances. It formulates a systemic hypothesis that models how debts of time, justice, and place have accumulated and how they interact to generate the crisis. Naming organizational ghosts, identifying the asymmetry of sacrifices, bringing loyalty crises to light: all of this enables the collective to access an expanded awareness of its own dynamic, without any single actor being designated as solely responsible.

Fourth Principle: Collective Elaboration

One cannot regulate a psychological debt by decree. It must be collectively elaborated, which requires protected spaces for dialogue. ICI® includes dedicated workshops for each dimension: a Time workshop where the collective maps its memory and ritualizes its grief; a Justice workshop where invisible contributions are named and unkept promises examined; a Place workshop where roles are clarified and the sense of belonging rebuilt. The goal is not to find immediate solutions but to allow speech to circulate, to create mutual recognition, to re-humanize relationships.

Fifth Principle: Reorienting Toward the Future

Mobbing thrives in organizations that are psychically turned toward the past – those where the dominant discourse is “things were better before,” those that speak only of what they have lost. ICI® aims to enable the shift from a victim narrative (“they did this to us”) to an empowering narrative (“we went through this and we choose to build”). This work of narrative reorientation does not deny the past: it integrates it in order to unlock the capacity for projection.

 

7. Practical Implications for Leaders and HR Directors

If the analysis I propose here is sound, it carries considerable practical implications for managing mobbing situations in organizations.

Before mobbing: prevent through relational context quality. Lax behavioral standards around “living together” prevent establishing a clear red line. But beyond formal rules, it is the organization’s capacity to ritualize its transitions, acknowledge contributions, and clarify everyone’s place that constitutes the best bulwark against mobbing. An organization that continuously regulates its psychological debts does not need a scapegoat.

During mobbing: protect the target AND understand the system. Protecting the targeted person is an absolute priority. But if one merely relocates the target or sanctions the perpetrators without addressing the debts that fueled the dynamic, the situation will recur. It is essential to conduct a contextual diagnosis that identifies the psychological debts at play and the paranoid dynamic that transformed them into violence.

After mobbing: repair the relational fabric. Mobbing leaves deep traumatic traces, not only in the target – who may develop genuine post-traumatic stress disorder leading to work phobia – but also within the collective. Perpetrators, when they become aware of the gravity of their actions, may experience massive guilt. Witnesses carry the weight of their silence. The entire organization bears the wound. The work of repair involves acknowledging the debts, ritualizing the harm caused, and rebuilding a collective project that allows everyone to find a legitimate place once more.

Conclusion: Toward a Systemic Approach to Collective Workplace Violence

Mobbing is not inevitable. Nor is it simply the product of “bad people” or “fragile victims.” It is the symptom of an organization that has failed to regulate its psychological debts and in which the paranoid dynamic has replaced dialogue.

The perspective I open here – connecting collective harassment to the crisis of place, unregulated debts, and the group paranoid dynamic – is not intended to exonerate perpetrators. Everyone remains responsible for their actions, and the legal dimension retains its full legitimacy. But understanding the systemic mechanisms that produce mobbing means equipping ourselves to genuinely prevent it – not through codes of conduct that remain dead letters, but through rigorous attention to the quality of the relational context.

Work, in a hypermodern world marked by individualism and the feeling of social insignificance, remains one of the last places where people seek to build a sense of belonging and legitimacy. When the organization fails to provide this existential security, it generates suffering which, if not elaborated, transforms into violence. Mobbing is that violence. Our responsibility as consultants, researchers, and leaders is to understand these mechanisms in order to help organizations become more conscious of themselves – and therefore more capable of self-regulation.

 

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References

Girard, R. (1986). Le Bouc Émissaire. Paris: Grasset.

Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership Without Easy Answers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Knipfer, K. & Kump, B. (2022). Collective rumination: When “problem talk” impairs organizational resilience. Applied Psychology, 71(1), 154-173.

Kramer, R. M. (1998). Paranoid cognition in social systems: Thinking and acting in the shadow of doubt. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(4), 251-275.

Leyens, J.-P. (2016). L’humanité écorchée: humanité et infrahumanisation. Paris: PUF.

Leymann, H. (1996). La persécution au travail. Paris: Seuil.

Poirot, M. (2019). Développez votre leadership positif! Paris: Vuibert.

Poirot, M. (2025). The Contributions of an Existential Psychology of Organizations. In Berkani, A. & Tran, S. (Eds.), Exploring the Flexibility of New Work Organization Models. Caen: Éditions EMS.

Poirot, M. (2026). Les dettes psychologiques au travail. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Poirot, M. & Lefebvre, B. (2015). Stress et risques psychosociaux au travail. Paris: Elsevier-Masson.

Ricœur, P. (2004). Parcours de la reconnaissance. Paris: Stock.

Zoja, L. (2018). Paranoia: The Madness That Makes History. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

 

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About the Author

Matthieu Poirot is a social psychologist and PhD in management sciences, founder of Midori Consulting. A researcher-practitioner specializing in complex psychosocial crises, he developed Integrative Contextual Intervention® (ICI®) and has been accompanying organizations facing situations that others refuse for over twenty years. Author of Develop Your Positive Leadership (Vuibert, 2019), Stop Exhausting Yourself (Eyrolles, 2026), and Psychological Debts at Work(L’Harmattan, 2026). Contact: matthieu.poirot@midori-consulting.eu