Isabel Menzies Lyth: Traditions and Innovations

The authors sketch their personal recollections of Isabel Menzies Lyth and the various roles in which they knew her, in particular, as a group relations consultant and as an organisational development consultant. They describe Isabel's contribution to the fields of group relations and consultancy and her critical views of the use of unmodified psychoanalytical models and her innovative ways of working. The authors make the point that Isabel never departed from her scientific research and change-oriented consultancy roots; they describe how she strove to move people and organisations on; they also describe how her most powerful tool lay in holding the balance between the content of groups and organisations and the processes of researching, listening and consulting and her expert use of the transference and counter-transference.'