A reading list: Psychodynamic Lenses on Organizations
I have always found the organizations I have worked in to be complex structures by turns frustrating and fascinating. I am attracted to books and authors who offer some possibility of making sense of it all. I share some of the ones I have found most useful here. They all, with the exception of one, look at organizations using psychodynamic theory and concepts.
The Tavistock was founded in 1920 and is one of the few publicly funded institutions in the UK where a psychoanalytic approach underpins therapeutic work with adults and children. Armstrong worked in the Tavistock Consultancy Service dedicated to applying a psychoanalytic lens to groups and institutions with the aim of improving their work.
I enjoyed Chapter 7 on Emotions in Organizations: disturbance or intelligence? ‘It seems to me that emotions in organizations including all the strategies of defence, denial, projection, and withdrawal - yield intelligence. And it is because they yield intelligence in this way that they may be worth our and our client’s close attention.’ (page 93)
David Armstrong, (2005). Organization in the Mind: Psychoanalysis, Group Relations and Organizational Consultancy. Karnac Books Ltd.
Another collection of chapters from writers from the Tavistock divided into sections on leadership, change and creativity, working relations in a new organizational order and working with the experience of vulnerability.
Chapter Four: ‘What is the emotional cost of distributed leadership?’ And Chapter Seven: ‘The vanishing organization: organizational containment in a networked world’ offer interesting insight into the emotional impact and consequences of flattened and networked organizational structures which are integral to Agile production and contemporary management.
Huffington et al, (eds) (2004). Working Below the Surface, the Emotional Life of Contemporary Organizations. Karnac Books Ltd.
Many of the examples relate to experiences in public sector organizations and especially in hospitals. I still think the ideas presented are useful in the HR context of other kinds of organizations since HR practitioners, on the whole, identify themselves as people who enjoy helping others.
Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts (eds), (1994). ‘The Unconscious at Work: Individual and Organizational Stress in the Human Services’. Routledge.
This book is described as an introduction and really does present systems psychodynamic ideas in accessible language. Section two on relationships, really has helped me understand sometimes difficult aspects of organizational life and section 7 on trust presents the underlying dynamics and origins of this most elusive of concepts in organizational life.
Lionel F. Stapley, (2006). ‘Individuals, Groups and Organizations Beneath the Surface: an introduction’. Karnac Books Ltd
Oshry is a sociologist and draws lessons on power dynamics in working groups based on observational studies with groups in many settings naturalistic and constructed. If the first 3 books in this list try to go ‘below’ the surface, Oshry stays resolutely ‘at the surface’ but the lessons he draws on leadership are equally profound.
I had the privilege of attending the ‘Seeing Systems’ workshop led by Barry and his wife Karen and I still find it one of the most useful ways of understanding and helping others understand and empathize with the consequences of different positions of power in organizations large and small.
Barry Oshry, (1999). Leading Systems: lessons from the power lab. Barrett Koehler Inc
Gabriel and other contributing authors applying psychodynamic thinking to all kinds of organizations in an accessible way. Chapter 10 on ‘psychoanalysis and ethics in organizations’ is so relevant for understanding the organizational scandals where ethical frameworks failed or were conspicuously absent in a range of organizations in the industrial, financial and energy sectors.
There is also a glossary at the end of this book which is a useful refresher on the psychoanalytic concepts and ideas used in understanding organizations from the perspective.
Yiannis Gabriel (ed), (1999). ‘Organizations In depth’ Sage publications.
This book seeks to take an international perspective on organizational life by collecting contributions from authors in the UK, North America, France , Italy and South America. Chapter 3, ‘Contribution from North America (1) The Modern Project and the Feminization of Men’ is particularly provocative and intriguing.
R.D. Hinshelwood and Marco Chiesa, (eds.) (2001). ‘Organisations, Anxieties & Defences’. Routledge.
