Some Socio-Analytical Reflections on Vengeance and Revenge*

Burkard Sievers & Rose Redding Mersky

Time may pass by but vengeance is keeping an eye on its aim. It has a long
memory and does not know any prescription. It is waiting with patience for
the moment of fulfilment.

(Sofsky, 2002, p 58)

If money's to be the measurer, man, and the
accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell
thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium HERE!

(Melville, Moby Dick, 1851/1967, p 77)

Abstract

The paper is guided by the working hypothesis that the psychoanalytic perspective on vengeance, primarily, if not exclusively, a dynamic of the inner world of the individual, does not sufficiently take into account the social understanding of vengeance, which has predominated in the history of mankind long before the advent of psychoanalysis. A socio-analytic perspective on vengeance makes use of the concept of binocular vision and the perspective of the Sphinx. Vengeance thus appears as a psychosocial phenomenon and dynamic that more often than not is caused by and affects both the individual actor(s) and the collective, i.e. the community or polis of related people. Vengeance in social (political and economic) contexts often leads to strategies through which its underlying feelings must be hidden behind an apparent logic of rationality. Aggressive and annihilating desires and actions are concealed behind such pursuits as justice and competition, and the illusion is sustained that – in contrast to our ancestors – we live in an age free of violence.

The question that presents itself is how are feelings and actions related to revenge and vengeance actually contained, maintained and ‘digested’ and how are they expressed individually, organizationally, societally and economically. In the last section we explore the relatedness of vengeance and economy.

Introduction

This paper emanates from the first author’s fascination in the early 90's with the economy of vengeance in the mid-19th century whaling industry as described by Herman Melville (1851/1967) in Moby Dick (Sievers, 1993, 1994, 2002). He thought of the whaling vessel Pequod as an organization with Ahab as the ’chief executive’ who, together with his crew, sailed into the Pacific to perform the primary task of delivering whale oil. The story of Moby Dick can be read as the account of a man who destroyed himself, his crew and his ship by making the taking of vengeance for his own personal injury – the loss of his leg to the White Whale – as his exclusive management goal.

This paper is guided by the working hypothesis that the psychoanalytic perspective on vengeance – primarily, if not exclusively, a dynamic of the inner world of the individual – does not sufficiently take into account the social understanding of vengeance. A socio-analytic perspective on vengeance makes use of the concept of binocular vision and the perspective of the Sphinx in particular (Bion, 1961, p 8; Lawrence, 1999). Vengeance thus appears as a psychosocial phenomenon and dynamic that more often than not is caused by and affects both the individual actor(s) and the collective, i.e. the community or polis of related people. Vengeance in social (political and economic) contexts often leads to strategies through which its underlying feelings must be hidden behind an apparent logic of rationality. The predominance of vengeance can lead to a vindictive psychotic collusion, in which everyone seems to be convinced that the outside persecutor is evil, whereas the respective organization and its members remain good. Aggressive and annihilating desires and actions are concealed behind such pursuits as justice and competition, and the illusion is sustained that – in contrast to our ancestors – we live in an age free of violence.

The metaphors of ‘economy of vengeance’ and ‘business of revenge’, taken from drama and fiction, will serve to illuminate the phenomenon of the often hidden social, political, and economic dynamics of vengeance characteristic of and strongly influencing contemporary organizations and society.

The fact that this paper is focused on the economy of vengeance may be misleading at first sight – especially to psychoanalysts thoroughly familiar with Freud and his writings. We are, however, not referring to Freud’s metapsychology, in which the economic model is one of his “working models of the mind” (Hinshelwood, 1991, p 282; cf. Nagera, 1974, pp 348; Meissner, 1995; Gourgé, 2001, pp 112, 122, 172). The meaning of economy chosen here is derived not from the concept of energy in the natural sciences (as is Freud's metapsychology) but refers primarily to economics as a social science.

I. The psychoanalytic perspective on vengeance and revenge

Though various psychoanalytic authors differ slightly in their explication, there is apparently general agreement that vengeance is an expression of the inability to integrate love and hate and a reaction to fundamental losses in early childhood. As Socarides (1966, pp 358) writes: “Unconsciously the aim of the vengeful individual is to hide a more disastrous damage to the ego, a damage experienced during the earliest years of life and underlying the specific injuries of which he complains. In this sense the act of vengeance is a defense mechanism whose function is to conceal the deepest traumata of childhood.” It seeks to ruin the other. He continues: “The aim of vengeful impulses is not only destructive introjection, but to put hated parts of the self onto the hated object in order to spoil and destroy it. Even spoiling of the self may be resorted to in the hope that it will result in the object's pain and suffering” (ibid., pp 373).

Vengeful destruction can be seen as a spontaneous, pleasure-oriented, cruel and insatiable desire to take revenge on those who have inflicted unwarranted suffering on oneself or a group with whom one identifies. Unlike normal defensive aggressions, such a reaction emerges – according to Fromm (1973/1977, p 306) – after the injustice has been experienced; it thus is not a defence against an apparent danger but retribution for a previously experienced one, and is based on the conscious intention to return ‘like for like’.

It appears that the experience of loss is based on two different and often complementary unconscious processes, an active and a passive one, so to say. Through projective identification the child actively attempts and thus may succeed to get rid of parts of itself, which it may not yet be able to cope with; these are, above all, feelings of hate, rage, grief and (mortal) anxieties. On the other hand, the passive process of loss, which Christopher Bollas (1987, pp 157) has termed extractive introjection, is based on burglary and theft and may be related to the child's mental content, its affective process, mental structure and ultimately even its Self. In contrast to projecting, “one person steals for a certain period of time … an element of another individual's psychic life” (ibid., p 158). This loss results in unconscious grief and violence and the desperate conviction that by taking revenge, one can recover these lost aspects.

Since these two processes (projective identification and extractive introjection) can be regarded as preconditions for vindictiveness, the economy of vengeance is at its core not only an economy of scarcity but also an endless drain on the avenger's resources. As he or she desperately endeavours to avoid the experience of despair that results from these losses, the chronic avenger continually struggles to fill a gap of which he or she is not aware.

Kohut (1972) posits that vengeance can be understood as an expression of narcissistic rage. The coercive economic control exercised by the vindictive individual – through the extinction of its enemies – enslaves and ultimately destroys the individual himself in the obsessively doomed attempt to maintain the grandiose self and the glorified idealized self-object. Chronic vengefulness requires enormous energy to simplify the complexity and defend against despair. Vengeance can become a substitute for meaning and thus the 'meaning' of one's life.

The vindictive individual tends to derive surrogate pleasure and satisfaction from the act of vengeance itself, especially from one’s resulting triumphs. They provide excitement, thrill and passion:

“The wish to vindicate oneself in the spirit of defiant triumph can be the determining force in any drive for success, prestige, or sexual conquest. Finally the need for triumph is an integral part of all the vindictive drives. ... To have power, to humiliate, to exploit, to frustrate, essentially means triumph. ... Being addicted to chasing the phantom of triumph means being caught in a vicious circle” (Horney, 1948, p 9).

Both the losses of early childhood and the self-enslavement of vengeance tend to be hidden by one’s grandiosity and a megalomania that excludes the possibility of danger or failure.

In the psychoanalytic literature on vengeance, the majority of authors reduces revenge to a phenomenon of the inner world of the individual. To the extent that vengeance is acted out, it may have a stronger or lesser impact on others. This leaves one with the impression that vengeance is mainly an expression of individual primitivism and immaturity that reflects a neurotic or psychotic ‘personal pathology’. It has only been through the contribution of psychoanalytic authors like Melanie Klein (1963), Heinz Kohut (1972) and Erich Fromm (1973/1977, pp 271) that vengeance and vengefulness have been given a broader meaning as part of a more extended social drama.

II. A Socio-analytic perspective on vengeance

As already suggested, the psychoanalytic emphasis on Oedipus limits revenge to that which originates from experienced losses in infancy caused by the relationship to the mother (and/or father). This limited perspective reflects a general tendency of psychoanalysis to deny the reality of the outer world and its impact on the individual.

Using only the Oedipal perspective, for example, one would attribute Ahab’s desperate search for vengeance to the early loss of his “crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old” (Melville, 1851/1967, p 77; cf. Henseler, 1983). Such a view would not take into account the actual loss he experienced when dismembered by the White Whale and the extreme violence and brutality on board American whaling vessels in the mid-19th century. A more recent but equally striking example would be to interpret the determination of the present US government to declare war and invade Iraq predominantly by the psychobiography of George W. Bush. Though such a perspective would undoubtedly provide interesting insights into Bush the person, it would totally ignore the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the presidential role holder.

The principal of retribution: Hans Kelsen

So far as the social sciences are concerned, it is above all the studies of early societies by Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) that have deepened our understanding of the function of retribution in society and in the natural world. The act of differentiating nature from society, according to Kelsen (1943/1946) is a relatively recent accomplishment. It was preceded by the primitive worldview that nature and mankind were one, which was maintained by tradition and primarily emotionally constituted. Man's relatedness to nature was seen as similar to the relationship between two ‘persons’. As the notion of the individual did not as yet exist, it was exclusively the group, i.e. the ‘social’, from which reality was interpreted.

In his book Society and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry Kelsen (1943/1946) attributes the notion of justice and thus of a 'just world order', which in itself suggests some aspect of retribution, to a primitive view of nature and the belief in a soul that lives forever. Kelsen sees vengeance as an active effort initiated by the avenger to inflict evil on the assumed initiator of a previously suffered evil or on any other individual to whom the responsibility for this suffering is collectively ascribed. Taking this action cannot sufficiently be explained as a natural aggressive drive, because no act of vengeance is taken without the previous (real or imagined) action of an ‘other’. It has to be assumed that such a reaction presupposes some kind of a societal state, as opposed to an individual instinct.

In taking vengeance, one acts for the whole community. The vengeance taker perceives the previously suffered evil as a deviation from the norm. It is a violation of the existing societal order and is thus immoral.

In comparison to the psychoanalytic perspective, which is ontogenetic (Freud, 1929, p 65), Kelsen’s emphasis is phylogenetic, in that he regards vengeance as part of the social inheritance of mankind and thus a cultural phenomenon. One may reasonably wonder if these two views are compatible.

Our view is that the narrow conceptualisation of vengeance in contemporary society, in general, and in psychoanalysis, in particular, needs to be extended, using Kelsen's notion of 'primitivism'. The primitive nature of contemporary expressions of vengeance is, to a certain extent, an inheritance from much earlier times.

Kelsen helps us realize that vengeance is not primarily the act of a single (monadic) individual. Taking vengeance is culturally patterned. It cannot be adequately conceptualised without its relatedness to various others, to objects of the inner and the outer world.

The alienated elaboration of mourning: Franco Fornari

The Psychoanalysis of War, by the Italian psychoanalyst Franco Fornari (1966/1975), is based on Bion’s (1961) observations on the psychotic dynamic of groups and the notion of social defences as developed by the early Jaques (1953, 1955) and Menzies-Lyth (1960/1988). In Fornari's view, the psychotic dynamic in the life of groups finds its extreme expression in war.

Because groups, in a perverse and alienated way, have difficulty experiencing loss, assuming responsibility for their own destructiveness and coping with the associated guilt, they see the destructivity and annihilation they experience as caused by the environment, i.e. by an evil other group. This displacement of guilt can – according to Fornari – be interpreted as an alienated elaboration of mourning. Contrary to the non-psychotic elaboration of mourning, in which the pain of mourning can be endured by the confidence that eventually it can be overcome (Fornari, 1966/1975, p 224), the psychotic elaboration of mourning is based on feelings which are projected – as blame – onto the enemy (ibid., 51). The destruction is seen to have been caused by an enemy who, through a process of projection, becomes the object of hatred and represents the unacknowledged guilt of those who experience attack or a fear of being attacked.

War thus can be understood as a social organization of a psychotic kind whose fundamental dynamic is based on a paranoid elaboration of mourning (see Sievers, 2000). A group that cannot acknowledge its own destructiveness often displaces it by engaging in endless warfare against perceived – and created – enemies.

Contrary to the predominant view that war is an expression of hatred, Fornari is of the paradoxical opinion that war is more likely based on the ‘madness of love’ (Fornari, 1966/1975, p 261). Instead of acknowledging the experience of loss and destruction of a group’s ‘loved object’ and accepting the associated feelings of guilt, the avenger blames the enemy for being ultimately responsible for the war. The enemy's defeat is the ultimate proof of his guilt, and his annihilation is rationalised as the punishment for his crime.

Transgenerational transmission of trauma: Vamik Volkan

The transgenerational transmission of trauma is a concept developed by Vamik Volkan (1996), a psychoanalyst of Turkish-Cyprian origin, and is based on the idea that traumas, no matter how ancient, mythologically stay alive in the collective consciousness of groups and societies.

Volkan (1996) has used this concept to develop a deeper understanding of the ethnic and national conflict between the Serbs and the Bosnians. In 1389, Serbia suffered a traumatic defeat in the Battle of Kosovo at the hands of the Ottomans and Muslims. Slobodan Milosevic , on June 28, 1989 – on the occasion of the 600^th anniversary of the battle, vowed that Islam would never again subjugate the Serbs.

Volkan (1991) characterises this focus on the Battle of Kosovo as a chosen trauma. This concept "reflects a large group's unconscious choice to have their group identity be defined by the transgenerational transmission of the shared trauma!” (Volkan, 1996, p 117). In the present context this means that the original trauma experienced by Serbian ancestors in the 14th century had been revitalized and passed on to contemporary generations of Serbs. The actual discontent and humiliation experienced in the late phase of the Yugoslavian federation and the mental representation associated with them formed fertile ground for this reactivation. Serbians longed for an ethnic and national identity extending far beyond their short history as part of the Communist state of Yugoslavia. As such, this chosen trauma reinforced in them the belief that they were the only people possessing the truth and truly following the calling of God.

Volkan's (1991, 1996, 1999, 2002) contribution helps us to expand the concept of revenge from the limited focus of a (monadic) individual to the psychosocial environment. Looked at from the broader systemic context of an ethnic group, nation or organization, revenge mobilized by a chosen trauma may significantly affect the experience and thus the thinking and actions of both the social system and the individual.

As with a primitive society, the revenge dynamic resulting from the chosen trauma revitalizes a social identity in which there is no difference between the community and the individual. One's individual identity is gladly traded for membership in a special and destined group.

The illusion of a world free of vengeance and violence

Vengeance is not exclusively the action of a subjective will but has been deeply ingrained in the social and moral fabric of mankind since time immemorial.

“Like gratitude, vengeance is a part of society’s moral memory. … People do bear a grudge both for good and evil. The modern devaluation of revenge has failed to take notice of its moral perseverance. Revenge does not know forgiveness nor does it fall into oblivion. Time may pass by but vengeance is keeping an eye on its aim. It has a long memory and does not know any prescription. It is waiting with patience for the moment of fulfilment. The memory of the deed does not extinguish. In the flow of time revenge thus is a moment of duration. It is keeping the past present; it bears the dead in mind and keeps faith with them. It wants to continue where the dead are no longer able to do so. The deed shall be rescinded. Vengeance, therefore, is a leap out of the impotence of suffering into liberating action” (Sofsky, 2002, p 58).

To acknowledge the reality that we adults can never free ourselves from the code of the primitive requires maturity. Taking vengeance can thus be seen as an expression of the belief that we are one with the universe and its unlimited power. The need or desire to take personal vengeance on others is not only a futile attempt to defend oneself against the deep losses and traumata of childhood but a means to experience oneself as not being alone, much more powerful than one actually is (which includes the ability to destroy others) and immortal. To the extent that we consciously or unconsciously take part in collective campaigns of vengeance, we allow ourselves to be seduced by the illusion that it is possible to overcome the experienced chaos of the real world and re-establish the social order of primitive man. In the attempt to regain a lost paradise through the oppression and destruction of external enemies, we lose sight of the persecutory figures that we unconsciously sustain in our inner world and our collective past.

When viewed as part of mankind's inheritance, vengeance cannot be regarded as a kind of accident that unavoidably happens again and again on the part of an individual or a society. Instead it has to be understood as a constituent part of mankind's fate (Sofsky, 1996, p 224).

 Though vengeance has to be understood as an ultimately futile attempt to cope with the despair related to the denial of mortality, we must accept that the predominant ignorance, denial, and diabolization of vengeance is a constituent part of our culture. Vengeance has always been and continues to be a constituent part of 'our theatre of cruelty' (Baudrillard, 1983, pp 111). It is the primitivism and madness projected into the other that allows oneself to sustain the illusion of civilization both towards an individual 'criminal' and against whole peoples.

III. Vengeance in organization and society

As the first two parts of this paper suggest, the analysis of the economy of vengeance and its meaning and relevance for organizations and society requires the perspective of the project of the Sphinx and binocular vision. As may be no surprise, the topic of revenge is broadly missing in management and organization theory. This may be explained by the fact that these theories – and their authors – tend to deny the predominantly unconscious irrationality and madness in organizations, usually regarded as “'rational' madness” (Lawrence, 1995b).

Vengeance and the Psychotic Organization

For Melanie Klein, revenge – and psychotic dynamics – can be regarded as a constituent dimension of her psychoanalytic view of the development of the infant – and thus the adult whose ‘existence’ is rooted in this early development. Organizational psychosis – as previously explicated (Sievers, 1999) – refers to the extent to which organizational dynamics are influenced or even initiated by unconscious psychotic reactions to the organizational environment. These psychotic reactions are expressions of underlying anxieties and seen as "socially induced rather than a product of the individual" (Lawrence, 1995a, 17; cf. Lawrence & Armstrong, 1998).

From the perspective suggested here, vengeance can be understood as based on distorted thinking, which divides the internal and the external world into good and evil and thus into allies and enemies. In Kleinian terminology vengeance is an expression of the psychotic anxieties typical for the paranoid-schizoid position, predominantly or even exclusively determined by persecutory anxieties, and the vicious circle of retaliation and revenge concomitant to it. These anxieties leave no capacity for feelings of love or guilt, nor the desire to take responsibility or reconcile, which are the anxieties typical for the depressive position (cf. Sievers, 2003b).

Following Fornari’s (1966/1975, p 261) paradoxical suggestion that war is not an expression of hate but rather based on the ‘madness of love’, vengeance can be seen as a disguised form of love. Like war, vengeance can be the result of an organization's inability to acknowledge the experience of loss and destruction of its ‘loved object’ and to accept the feelings of guilt concomitant with that. The lack of organization ‘self-love’, the loss of its ‘loved object’ and the absence of the experience of love for and from others (organizations, the ‘market’, customers etc.) are projected onto a persecuting enemy. This ‘system’ introjects the projection and is made to feel sufficiently frightened that the (omnipotent) avenger will wreak violence, potentially leading to its annihilation. The longing for an ‘object of vengeance’ thus cannot only be seen as an expression of an organization's grandiosity (and cruelty) but further serves as a ‘return on investment’ for the disguised love projected onto its opponent.

To the extent that organizations are dominated by a dynamic of vengeance as a form of disguised love, the thinking about the internal organization and its environment becomes predominantly psychotic, i.e. distorted, fragmented, dominated by splitting and idealization and preoccupied by the desire to seek justice for the consciously or unconsciously experienced wrong.

Vengeance as an organizational dynamic

The phantasy or the desire for revenge can be an organizational ‘unthought known’ (Bollas, 1987, 1989), "known at some level but has never been thought or put into words, and so is not available for further thinking” (Lawrence, 2000, pp 11). This may further explain why vengeance – like the unthought known of war – often is expatriated to a major extent from organizations and projected instead onto the environment of customers and competitors.

Role holders, whose ‘institution-in-the-mind’ (Armstrong, 1997) is driven by phantasies of retaliation and vengeance in order to avoid suffering and to defend against an experienced wrong, usually face an insoluble dilemma. Since retaliation against the organization is accompanied by the risk of being severely punished or even dismissed by management, the phantasy of revenge or even the idea of entertaining vengeful thoughts may endanger one's ability to make a living. The belief or the experience “that it is too dangerous to seek vengeance openly and directly in action” (Steiner, 1996, p 433) thus may lead to resentments that foster employees’ conscious or unconscious decisions to reduce their commitment and contribution to the enterprise to the minimum required of them in their roles.

It has become increasingly obvious to us that many of the strategic means used for competition on the (world) markets are rooted in the revitalization of traumata from a company's or nation's founding process. Contemporary businesses, companies or national economies unconsciously affected by the transgenerational transmission of a chosen trauma may become mobilized to achieve ultimate triumph over contemporary competitors, who stand in for historic 'enemies'. Official business reports, strategic plans and balance sheets may function as ‘cover’ for revenge mobilized by the deposited traumatized self-representation of a company. The vindictive economy of retribution thus may fuel the economy of commodities, services and money. Put another way, retribution may be considered an excellent business strategy.

The story of Ferdinand Piech, former CEO of Volkswagen and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche (who, with Adolf Hitler, founded the company in 1938), well illustrates how the retraumatisation of previous losses both from one's personal biography and from the history of one's family may merge with the unmourned losses of a company's past. The distrustful Piech felt permanently surrounded by enemies. He always imagined himself at war with his competitors, the Japanese and, for that matter, everyone else. And there was no fight without winners and losers. As he stated, ‘I intend to be the winner’ (N. N., 1998, p 93; Sievers, 2000b). The pressure and thus the social attack mounted on his management and workforce for accomplishing this target were enormous.

In another contemporary example, Lee Iacocca, once CEO of Ford, left no doubt of his intent to take revenge on Henry Ford II, who had dismissed him in 1978 for personal reasons. Soon after leaving Ford, Iacocca took the top executive role at Chrysler, Ford's main competitor at the time (Iacocca &Novak, 1984; cf. Zaleznik, 1993, p 185). Chrysler was nearly bankrupt, and Iacocca was determined to turn it around and gain significant market share over Ford in the American and international automobile markets. Iacocca made no secret of his motive to take revenge for the humiliation of his previous dismissal. It appears likely that his ultimate triumph was achieved by means of a social attack on Chrysler employees, who carried the burden and suffered the stress and strain of achieving his goals. It appears most likely that Iacocca's attempt to right his wrong – despite its ‘positive’ outcome – involved a vindictive psychotic collusion, in which almost everyone at Chrysler became convinced that the outside persecutor was evil, while the corporation and its members remained good.

Nowadays the term ‘customers’ is no longer limited to external ‘buyers’ of an organization’s goods and services but includes all those previously identified as organizational members (e.g. co-employees in other units, students, residents or patients; cf. Long, 1999a/b). These customers in an expanded sense may become the target of unconscious vindictive phantasies insofar as they are often turned by staff or co-employees into recipients of the disguised love and distorted thinking concomitant to vengeance.

This seems, for example, to be the daily reality in nursing homes for the elderly. Nurses in their professional roles may often have difficulty coping adequately with their own experiences of personal loss and unconsciously transfer their own disguised love to elderly patients, on whom they may take revenge for their personal loss and suffering.

Police violence against those they have arrested can be seen as their revenge for society's disrespect toward them in their roles. Likewise prison guards may sometime act out society's unconscious desire for revenge for the heinous crimes some prisoners have committed (cf. Long, 1999b). Both police and prison guards – in breaking the law by taking revenge – ironically become very like the criminals and prisoners they are expected to control on society’s behalf.

Vengeance as a societal dynamic

The current war against Iraq is a ‘bad’ enough illustration of a social (and political) dynamic of vengeance that far exceeds a particular revenge-taker and his opposite. In this particular case, it is not merely a matter of the community or the polis, but of the entire world. Not only are the world’s nations divided into allies and opponents of the war and the (broadly unacknowledged) vengeance on which it is based, but the diplomatic failures preceding its start have raised enormous amounts of aggression and threatened many long-term alliances. The stance of the US government in particular may be seen as an expression of disguised love, in that the high esteem and regard that it has for itself and that is surely legitimized by God, is not universally shared, even by many of its own citizens. Quite the contrary, there is the strongly held view that its actions in this case are strictly a reflection of its grandiosity and desire for hegemonic power.

Though this cannot be the space to elaborate the psycho-, socio-historical and not least the economic implications of this situation in more detail, much evidence points to the fact that the current policy of the Bush government is based on the deep national humiliation experienced by the terror attack of 9/11 – shared apparently by a majority of Americans and its allies – leading to the decision to take vengeance on Iraq (despite the fact that there is no evidence that Iraq is implicated; cf. Wirth, 2003a/b).

Some suggest that the Bush government is exploiting 9/11 for the sake of national global hegemonic interests. This provides chilling evidence of the potential consequences of a politically and militaristically engineered vengeance.

IV. Vengeance as an Economic Dynamic

In ending this paper we would like to focus on the economy of vengeance. This final task has been the most difficult one of our venture on vengeance. This indicates to us that the relatedness between economy and the violence of vengeance (the wish for annihilation of the other and the desperate longing for survival and immortality on the side of the avenger) is such a fundamental issue that its wide frame requires broader scholarship to do justice to the enormous significance and frightening destructivity of vengeance and vindictive dynamics in contemporary capitalistic economy.

In focussing on the interrelatedness of vengeance and economy in the context of organizations and society, chosen here, we would suggest to leave for a moment the discrimination between the project of Oedipus and that of the Sphinx, previously used in this paper, and to refer to the differentiations of micro- and macro-politics and -economy common in organizational theory and economics. The difference between an organization and its environment allows us, in the present context, to make the distinction between vindictive dynamics amongst organizational role holders inside the organization on the one hand and those at the interface of the organization with its markets, competitors, suppliers, customers and the ‘world’ at large on the other.

It thus appears that much of the economic implications of vengeance elaborated in the first chapter from a psychoanalytic perspective have some relevance for the micro-politics and -economy dimensions ‘inside’ an organization – under the precondition, however, that we are not referring to individuals but to organizational role holders (cf. Lawrence, 2003).

Even though certain episodes of vengeance between two role holders may at first sight appear to be mainly or exclusively an interpersonal matter, the perspective, chosen here, fosters the hypothesis that in their quarrel the role holders may be acting out broader organizational issues or dynamics which cannot (yet) be addressed openly (cf. Long, 2001; Mersky, 2001). Even a single act of vengeance thus may serve an economic function for the organization in so far as it may be an expression of the underlying phantasy that bringing the disguised issue into the open would be too costly and could well overwhelm the organization's competence and resources. Such a phantasy may ignore the opposite possibility, i.e. that the actual costs of a vindictive relationship between two role holders or subsystems may be quite high due to the amount of time, energy and manpower it absorbs and the resultant inefficiencies that increase costs and thus reduce profit. To the extent that a vindictive working relationship is socially induced by the organization (and/or its environment) it is most likely that individual role holders may get personally involved in the vindictive organizational dynamic and thus may make matters worse. In losing sight of the requirements of their roles, organizational role holders may ultimately be tempted to abuse either consciously or unconsciously a working relationship or the organization as a whole for their private business of revenge. Thus the psychic economy of vengeance becomes a social, i.e. organizational one, which may not only be quite costly the organization but ultimately cause a major loss or e bankruptcy.

That the ‘execution’ of vengeance can be a high ‘cost factor’ for an organization may, however, not only be a phenomenon limited to micro-politics and -economy. It also may effect an organization on the macro level insofar as the conscious or unconscious strategy of taking vengeance on competitors by actively attempting to reduce their market shares, destroying or annihilating them, does not always pay off.

It may be assumed that the failure rate of vindictive strategies may equal or perhaps outnumber the failure rate of mergers among enterprises. There is quite some evidence that about 70% of these mergers either fail totally or by far do not bring the expected result of the intended synergy. Since one may assume that many initiatives for a merger are themselves an expression of the underlying desire for vengeance, one can assume that they are driven by the same desire for grandiosity and megalomania. These strategies serve to conceal the underlying aggressive and annihilating desire and actions behind the pursuit of organizational growth, the maximization of profit and the optimisation of shareholder value. Often any further consciousness of the actual risk to the avenger or the initiator of a merger is not recognized.

Despite the fact that contemporary economy and its ‘agents’ broadly lack a consciousness of the past, it nevertheless is most likely that competitive strategies utilized by the ‘agents’ on the (world) markets may to various extents be rooted in ‘traumata’ and losses from earlier times of a company’s or national economy’s founding process. If a business, company or national economy thus, for example, is unconsciously caught by (or devoted to) a transgenerational transmission of a chosen trauma, it may not only mobilize a reckoning for earlier traumatic defeats but also substitute previous 'enemies' with contemporary competitors. It thus more often than not becomes difficult to determine to what extent a chosen strategy serves the accumulation of commoditized money or the ‘maintenance’ of survival and immortality.

The ‘business of revenge’ can be seen as an expression of a political economy, whose primary concern is not the use of physical materials, human and capital resources but the distribution of power and the quest for hegemony, which (consciously or unconsciously) aims for immortality – regardless of whether the respective context is an organization, an enterprise or the state.

As already suggested, the macro-economic and -political context has a further, much more significant aspect of vengeance if regarded in the broader frame of contemporary capitalistic economy and its increasing tendency towards globalisation. This can only be sketched on this occasion and certainly requires much further elaboration. If there is some truth to the assumption that contemporary economy has increasingly become a money game in which commoditized money begets commoditized money (cf. Wolfenstein, 1993; Burckhardt, 2001; Sievers, 2003a), it then can be assumed that most of the ways we give meaning to our experience of the outer world have already or will soon become obsolete because they have no commodity value and thus no longer serve as a source of meaning in the global game. As this development continues to spiral endlessly, we are surrounded (and driven) by a global economy that is nothing less than an endless money game. As with a casino in which – in addition to the rules of the game – all that counts is winning or losing bets and the profits of the operator, an economy exclusively driven by the accumulation of commoditized money seems to have no valency for love, hate and all other emotions or any other qualities and restrictions that have been considered essential for leading a human life. Any world beyond economy thus is but a ‘waste land’.

As it appears that in such a world there is also no valency for vengeance and its economy anymore, one may be left pondering if or to what extent the illusion expressed in the aria of Mozart’s Magic Flute: “Within these hallowed halls one knows not revenge” ultimately has become truth. And even though most, if not all, of what we have attempted to elaborate in this paper may then appear antiquated and/or obsolete, our venture was guided by the attempt to provide a more ‘solid basis’ to refrain from the ‘disillusion’ that the economy of vengeance and the business of revenge are but a pipedream of scholars who are either resistant or unable to move with the tides.

Conclusion

The above reflections have led us to view the ‘code of the social’ underlying contemporary economy as not exclusively one of causality but further tainted by that of retribution. We see the ‘agents’ on economic markets to be in a collusion of vengeance. So far as the (potential) impact of vengeance on economy is concerned we may yet have only explored the tip of the iceberg. Guided by the law of causality, the contemporary understanding of economy is so rational, normative and seductive that it is difficult to reflect upon economy and the market in any other way.

In developing our argument, we experienced again and again that it is not easy to make oneself available for such thoughts (cf. Bion, 1962), especially given the neo-liberal conviction that what an economy requires is a free market, a view largely regarded as irrefutable ‘truth’.

We must leave it to you to consider the value, if any, of this thesis. Regardless of how you resonate with this attempt, there can apparently be no doubt that the economy of vengeance in organizations and society still requires further exploration. We would like to leave you with the Italian Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello's insight that: “It is a frightening experience to see the present as past!” (Ortolani, 1994, p 119).

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Bios and contact details

Rose Redding Mersky, M. S., is an organizational development consultant and president of Redwood Executive Consulting, Inc. She is past-president of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and its current director of Professional Development. She is a faculty member of the Program in Organizational Development and Consultation at the William Alanson White Institute, New York. Her presentations and publications focus on the ‘intimacy" of consulting as a profession. In June 2000 the William Alanson White Institute awarded her its first annual ‘prize for the best paper on applied psychoanalysis’. She is a member of the editorial board of ‘Freie Assoziation – Zeitschrift für das Unbewusste in Organisation und Kultur’ and co-director of ‘Organizational Psychodynamics and Transformation’, an International Professional Development Program held in Coesfeld/Germany.

email: rosemer@earthlink.net

Dr. Burkard Sievers is Professor of Organizational Development in the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at Bergische Universität Wuppertal in Germany, where he teaches and writes on management and organization theory from a psychoanalytic perspective and an action research approach. He received his Dr. Soz. Wiss. from the University of Bielefeld in 1972 and has held visiting appointments at various universities in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe, and the U.S.A.. Dr. Sievers is co-editor of ‚Freie Assoziation – Zeitschrift für das Unbewusste in Organisation und Kultur’. He was a board member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and is President Elect for the period 2003-2005. He has served for many years on the board of (SCOS), the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism. Dr. Sievers was awarded the 1995 International Award for Participation from the HBK-Spaarbank in Antwerp (Belgium) for his book ‘Work, Death, and Life Itself. Essays on Management and Organization’, Berlin: de Gruyter 1994. He is co-director of ‘Organizational Psychodynamics and Transformation’, an International Professional Development Program held in Coesfeld/Germany.

email: sievers@wiwi.uni-wuppertal.de

* Paper presented at the 2004 annual Symposium ‘The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations’, Power and Politics, Boston, June 19 – 21; a more extended version is on the web http://www.ispso.org/Sympsoia/Bosteon/sievers.htm