art1-two basic assumptions in the psychoanalytic study of organizations

8/6/2019 Art1-Two Basic Assumptions in the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations

1/6

TWO BASIC ASSUMPTIONS IN THE PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OFORGANIZATIONS (1)

Andr Schonberg

In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that the field of Psycho-analytic Study ofOrganizations, which should put established wisdom and authoritativearrangements into question, which should be radical, even subversive to theestablished order, slides down into a cosy respectability and reassuring style.

I will not develop here the basic premise of my argument; let us take as onestarting point, as was done in the wave of the current attack on Freud ANDPsycho-analysis, that .psychoanalysis is crucial for a truly democraticculture to thrive.[it is a] vision of how one might both take humanirrationality seriously and participate in a democratic idealIt is a technique

that allows dark meanings and irrational motivations to rise to the surface ofconscious awareness. They can then be taken into account; they can beinfluenced by other considerations; and they become less liable to disrupthuman life in violent and incomprehensible ways. ( Jonathan Lear, 1995 ), andthat whatever the school or strand we espouse in Psychoanalysis, it has to dowith search, and looking beside, or underneath, with questioning, etc. InK.Eisold terms Psychoanalysis, then, is not about what takes place betweentwo persons, or in a consulting room, (.).It is an area of investigation that isdefined by the limits of the rational, an instrumentality for PROBING

PROBLEMATIC EXPERIENCE ( Eisold, 1995 - emphasis is mine A.S.)

The second starting point is that the application of psycho-analytic terms,concepts, views, etc. to organizations is developing , whether as a newdiscipline (Messer-Davidow, 1993 ) or a new paradigm (C.Harvey, 1982 ),surely as a field of inquiry and practice.The development of the field means that more people are engaged in activities,sometimes converging, sometimes not, are rallying around some main concepts,

problems, type of discourse, etc. Along with that, also, are emerging someclassics, prominent figures, traditions, basic issues and controversies, etc.

One question often debated, and not yet clearly resolved, concerns the veryissue of whether we deal with psycho-analytical study OF organizations, or of

people working IN organizations, and what one exactly means by that (see, forexample, Armstrong ,1995, Bar-Lev Elieli, 1994, De Board, 1978, Eisler, 1995,Obholzer and Roberts, 1994).

This is the scene: a powerful and growing invitation to use psycho-analyticalterms and apply them to the organization as a whole.The performance, quite often, is somewhat disappointing , because of a

forceful, if not wholly conscious, mechanism.

CHANGE CONSULTANTSAndre Schonberg 1


2/6

Looking at part of what is done and written nowadays in the field, one gets theimpression that there are some tacit understandings about what that field is, andwhat we ought to do when practising. Following Bions terminology and way ofobservation ( W.Bion, 1961 ), I will present here what can be called basic

assumptions , which seem quite prevalent among the practitioners of thePsycho-analytical study of organizations. Basic Assumptions, because thepractitioners write AS IF they assume those statements or assumptions to betrue.

I will present here two of these assumptions, and then propose that we canmeaningfully engage in the Psycho-analytical study of organizations withoutresorting to them.

1. THE BASIC ASSUMPTION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PRIMACY -

PSYCHOLOGICAL REDUCTIONISM

May be the most pervasive basic assumption in the field is the tacit belief thatpsychological factors ( couched in psycho-analytic terms ) are so important inthe determination of organizational behaviour, that any other factors in the lifeand analysis of organization, are barely mentioned, and so not examined, andweighted for their mutual and relative influence.It is as if the Psycho-analytical consultant is completely blind to, or ignorant ofthose factors deemed, in the ( non-psychological ) literature about organizations,

to be crucial and elementary in the understanding of organizational dynamics.By keeping this exclusive psychological focus, the Psycho-analytical consultantreduces the organization to a field of psychological conflicts and forces, andcompletely wipes out the substratum of power, position, differential access toresources and decision making, rewards, relationships with the environment,culture, climate, etc.If a director of Engineering struggles with a Director of Marketing - shall we

look for psychological reasons, and probe some hidden conflicts, or examine thehere and now dynamics with the consultant - when we know that Directors ofEngineering always struggle with Directors of Production, because it is a built

in, structural tension in organizations, and is not directly dependent on anypsychological characteristics of any of the persons concerned.

Another way to bypass the place of non-purely psychological factors in the lifeof the organization, is to deal with universal, existential dimensions , such asanxiety, or depressive feelings ( for example, the classical work of Menzies-Lyth,1959, or G.Lawrence, 1995 ). In so far as they are presented as allinclusive, pervasive elements of organization life, they leave no rule for thestudy of an historic, unique situation: that sweeping, grand theory pre-empts any

particular case, and assumes that any other factor, in fact, does not make theslightest difference.



3/6

The question one may raise is not how Psycho-analytic concepts and viewpointcan or should REPLACE ( substitute for ) other views of organization, but whatcan Psycho-analytic concepts ADD to those views, and may be re-place them,

enrich them with an additional perspective. That would be a task for newtheoretical and research developments of psycho-analytic concepts: not justmentioning Bions early works on groups, but developing his and othersinsights in the psychic reality of organizations and groups; linking this work tothe extensive literature on Organizational Culture, for example.2. THE BASIC ASSUMPTION OF UNITY & REPRESENTATION -

PSEUDO-SYSTEMIC MONISM

This Basic Assumption is perhaps not less pervasive than the previous one, but

is more intricate. It is the tacit belief and assumption that all the dynamics, orthe whole dynamics of the Organization is in fact represented into one of its

parts. For example, this assumption has it that if you work with the head of anOrganization, or if you work with one segment of the Organization, forexample, a certain level of management, it is AS IF you work with theOrganization as a whole. It is as if the whole dynamics of the Organization is(re)present(ed) in the Head of the general manager, or of any manager whohappens to work with the consultant. (see, for example, D.Armstrong, 1991).What kind of Organization can answer to that very special criteria ?

There is here in the hiding a monistic, microcosm assumption, like anhomunculus in which all the variety, differences, interrelations, etc. of thewhole, are present and represented in one part ! In fact, this view which issurreptitiously present in most one-on-one practice of the Psycho-analysis oforganizations, really means one of the following:

a) either it is a rejection of the very concept of open system: the systemreally is NOT important, you dont have to work with the whole; youmight as well work only with a privileged, so-called representative, part ofit !

b) or, it shows that in fact we just work with Psycho-analytical concepts

and we apply them to people IN Organizations. We do not in fact, in so faras this assumption is implemented, Psycho-analyze organizations: we just

psycho-analyze Managers in their role as Managers ( but then, where dowe stop the analysis, and why should they get it as a fringe benefit.?).

Moreover, that assumption, also, just like the previous one, denies the role ofPower, and its influence on positions, roles, beliefs, attitudes, strategies:everything is (represented) in the (head) of the General manager..What is repressed here, what is hidden, is the reality of domination, of power, of

power relations within the Organization ( see also Paul Hoggett pertinant



4/6

remarks on power in his review of _The Unconscious at Work_, published in_Free Associations_, 1996).In this methodology, who can really put in question the place, role andmechanisms of authority, of domination ! The stance adopted by this kind of

psycho-analytic study seems a very ideological, functionalist, elitist, conformist,pro-establishment, dominant and simplified view of an organization, whichwill never lead to troubling questions or to a re-assessment of the statu-quo.

3. WORKING WITHOUT THOSE ASSUMPTIONS

It seems to me that it is possible, may be even necessary, to undertake psycho-analytical study of, and work with, organizations, WITHOUT assuming any ofthose assumptions, and that the results can be quite interesting and rewarding.

The problem is not really with the application of the main principles ofanalytical work: ( 1) the presence of the analyst, 2) working with and throughtransference and countertransference, 3) work on the here and now, 4) thesearch for hidden and repressed meanings and motivations ).I believe the main challenge is to put as our client, or target, the Organizationitself, not just a person WITHIN the organization, whatever her /his role, or adefined and special stratum in it. It then would be more easy to look at theorganization as an organization, not just as a disembodied field of psychologicalforces, or a just a place where feelings, interpretations and meanings somehow

hover over twoo or more persons.

Two classical streams of work embody those principles: the Glacier project( E.Jaques , 1956), with its continuous work with the Organization as a whole,not only Top Management, but also middle management, Workersrepresentatives and councils, etc.The other strand being the so-called Leicester Conference, or Tavistock traditionconference ( Rice ,1965; Miller, 1989 ). That type of Conference strives to workwith the organization - of the Conference - as a whole, including Management

and Staff; no one there dreams to claim that working with ONE small Group ( ittends to be called sub-system, nowadays, following Gordon Lawrenceconception ), or only with one of the Institutional Event sub-groups, is enough !We know there that no single part ever represents the whole !, even ifrepresentations and links and interconnections are intensively sought for, maybesometimes even imposed on the facts.The conference design by itself does not pre-empt the possibility of falling intothe two Basic Assumptions mentioned earlier. In fact, more than one suchconference has fallen prey to psychologistic or monistic overgeneralizations.But, a Conference in which Authority, or rather the Conferences



5/6

MANAGEMENT - in the here and now of the Conference - is not challengedis, in fact, a waste of time - or just an elaborated T-Group experience !

It seems that our developing field of Psycho-analytic study of Organizations,

has, for now, made a full circle. Rice (1969) proposed to apply to individualand group behaviour the system theory of organization, normally used for theanalysis of enterprise processes. Now it seems that we tend to apply to theanalysis of enterprise and organizations processes, concepts developed fromindividual and group behaviour.I have suggested here that this reversal of concept application does not reallyenhances our understanding of organizations, but rather empoverishes andmasks some potentially disruptive understandings.

1. This is part of a paper discussed at the May 1996 meeting of ICS -Innovation and Change in Israeli Society, the first organization which sponsorsan annual Tavistock tradition Conference in Israel, from 1987 on.I thank Yossi Triest for some comments on an earlier draft.



6/6

BIBLIOGRAPHYD. Armstrong, The Institution in the Mind, 1991D. Armstrong, The Analytic Object in Organisational Work, 1995R. Bar-Lev Elieli, Psychoanalytic Thinking and Organizations, 1994

W.R. Bion, Experiences in Groups, 1961H. Bridger, The Kinds of Organizational Development required for workingat the level of the.1980R. De Board, The Psychoanalysis of Organizations, 1978K.Eisold, Psychoanalysis Today: Implications for organizational Applications,1995C. Harvey, The use and abuse of Kuhnian paradigms in the Sociology ofKnowledge, 1982P. Hoggett, Review of _The Unconscious at Work_, 1996E. Jaques, The Changing Culture of a Factory, 1956

J. Lear, A Counterblast in the War on Freud: the Shrink is In, 1995G. Lawrence, The presence of Totalitarian states-of-Mind in Institutions, 1995E. Messer-Davidow et al. (eds.), Knowledge: Historical and Critical Studies inDisciplinarity, 1993E. Miller, Task and Organization, 1976E. Miller, The Leicester Model, 1989I. Menzies Lyth, The Functioning of Social Systems as Defence againstAnxiety, 1959A. Obholzer and V.Z. Roberts (eds.), The unconscious at Work: Individual and

Organizational Stress in the Human Services, 1994A.K. Rice, Learning for Leadership, 1965A.K. Rice, Individual, Group and Intergroup Processes, 1969

Andr SCHONBERG, Conseiller de Synthse, Management ConsultantCHANGE CONSULTANTSP.O.B. 822 Raanana 43 107 ISRAELTEL: 972 9 435 097 FAX: 972 9 98 75 856 av. de Jericho Braine-LAlleud 1420 BELGIUM

TEL: 32 2 354 35 81 FAX: 32 2 354 34 86

e-mail: andre@ Actcom.co.il


art1-two basic assumptions in the psychoanalytic study of organizations

Documents