“The potential contributions of psychoanalytic thinking to this theme are many and come at a particularly sensitive moment in history. Both profit and nonprofit institutions and organizations have been deeply affected by significant world events as well as their own problematic internal processes, all with profound implications for the economy and for leaders, executives and managers in groups of all kinds from global corporations to small businesses and community organizations. Employees have been particularly beset as they struggle to remain vital and effective in a time of enormous vulnerability. 

 

The Symposium papers selected for this ‘special issue’ contribute various perspectives on power and politics and its potential impact both on organizations and society at large. Based on the tradition of ISPSO and fostering the intent of this journal, the papers represent an interdisciplinary approach to scholarly research and writing and thus cross disciplinary boundaries. In their present versions most of the papers are works in progress; they will be submitted in a more elaborated version at a later point in time to the following print journals: Human Relations, Socio-Analysis and Freie Assoziation (in German translation). 

In “Facing Facts: What’s the Good of Change?” Philip Boxer confronts, from a Lacanian perspective, the question of how to make anxiety bearable during unprecedented times of change in the UK’s National Health Service. Ken Eisold focuses on the recent corporate scandals in the United States in “Corrupt Groups in Contemporary Corporations: Outside Boards and Inside Traders”. He examines the emotional underpinnings of the systemic dynamics giving rise to unethical behavior in modern corporations. Tom Gilmore examines the under-researched area of leadership exits in “The Psychodynamics of Leadership Exits”. The paper explores themes such as denial, fears of being a lame duck, fantasies of control beyond one’s tenure, and other defenses against the inevitable uncertainties that arise with an impending exit. He also describes the kind of transitional space that can facilitate an appropriate ending.

The theme of retribution and scapegoating appears in Hannah Piterman’s paper, “You’re Either With Us or Against Us: Dominant Discourse in Health Care Practice”. Her thesis is that evidence-based practice as a medical paradigm – when idealized – elevates a rationalist model that devalues emotions as part of the total healthcare experience. Burkard Sievers and Rose Redding Mersky provide a socio-analytic perspective on the phenomenon of vengeance in “Some Socio-analytical Reflections on Vengeance and Revenge”. Their working hypothesis is that the psychoanalytic perspective of vengeance as exclusively centered on the inner world of the individual does not sufficiently consider social and historical forces and influence.

The final two papers address the events of September 11, 2001. Martin Walker provides a narrative of a Social Dreaming event held two weeks after 9/11 in his paper, “The Political Reality in Dreaming: a Focus on form over Content in the Psychoanalytic View of Social Dreaming”. In “Psychoanalytic Thoughts on 9/11” Hans-Jürgen Wirth explores the extent to which destructive fantasies are acted out or remain within the realm of fantasy. According to Wirth, psychoanalytic forces such as malignant narcissism, delusions of grandeur, feelings of powerlessness, individual and collective traumatizations, fanaticism, fundamentalism, and paranoid worldviews all play a part. The dehumanization of the other as a pre-condition for terrorism is also discussed.

These papers are also an expression of the fact that the psychoanalytic or socioanalytic study of organizations, like psychoanalysis itself, involves a number of overlapping concepts and approaches. For some, the field of inquiry is primarily about methods of studying the unconscious aspects of groups and systems: ideas, perceptions, relationships, and feelings that are driven out of awareness because of the intense anxiety they arouse. The hallmark of this unconscious domain is irrational behavior, and the goal of a psychoanalytic inquiry is to uncover the unconscious logic driving the irrational, to disclose the buried “roots of meaning”. 

For others, the focus is on specific ideas and extending and adapting traditional psychoanalytic concepts developed in the study of individual persons to groups and larger systems. “Transference” and “countertransference,” for example, refer to the sets of assumptions, often derived from childhood experience, that shape and colour current relationships. Such influences are often seen in relationships with authority figures.

For still others, the psychoanalytic perspective is about expanding our narrow “bandwidth of consciousness”, typically conveying a tiny percentage of information about human experience. By paying more attention to human subjectivity, to dreams, to emotions, to imagination and fantasy, it is possible to fill in the gaps between what’s espoused and what’s enacted, to gain a more complicated and complete insight into what happens in organizations. This approach often emphasizes the layered and ambivalent qualities of human motivation as well as the “socially constructed” nature of our institutions.

The papers in this issue demonstrate that a psychoanalytic inquiry into power and politics may focus on individual behavior in work roles and group behavior in teams, committees, boards of directors, and any of the many forms in which individuals join together around a task. Importantly, it can also focus on larger systems: corporations, government departments, foundations, regional agencies, and so forth. Society itself as well as international relations are further topics for inquiry.

Burkard Sievers, Susan D. Long & W. Gordon Lawrence

sievers@wiwi.uni-wuppertal.de , susan.long@rmit.edu.au , WGLAWRENCE@aol.com

Guest Editors of this issue