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The walls within: working with defenses against otherness

Online Conference 5-11 July 2021

Toronto 1999

Why We Do What We Do: The Use of Psychoanalytic Theories as they Apply to Organizational Research, Consultation and/or Management

Why We Do What We Do: The Use of Psychoanalytic Theories as they Apply to Organizational Research, Consultation and/or Management

Chair: Howard Book

ISPSO invited clinicians, researchers, academics, organizational consultants, managers and students to explore the application of psychoanalytic theories to the study of organizations. Our inquiry strove to understand the role of the unconscious in organizations; how people feel and think about their work, each other and their organization; what emotional needs the organization and its leaders satisfy or frustrate; and the relations between leaders and followers.

Plenary Presentation

Thinking as Refracted in Organizations-the Finite and the Infinite/the Conscious and the Unconscious, Gordon Lawrence

Cases I

Continuous Maintenance of Dead Organizational Aspects in a Volunteer Organization as a Defense Against Annihilation, Hanna Biran and Gila Ofer

Tensions around Role of Consultant as Container, Hannah Piterman

Countertransferences I

The Case of the Missing Author: From Parapraxis to Poetry and Insight in Organizational Studies, Howard F. Stein

Falling from Grace: When Consultants Go Out of Role- Enactment in the Service of the Consultation, Rose Redding Mersky

Transferences and Desire in Family Offices, Private Banks and Related Organizations Serving Wealthy Families, G. Scott Budge, Ph.D. and Paul McKibbin

Cases II

Working Across the Tensions: Organizational Role Analysis With Pairs from the Same Organization, Susan Long, Jon Newton, and Jane Chapman

Some Factors Impacting Containment in Organizational Consultation, Dr. Edward Klein

Analysis of a Consultative Effort from the Perspective of Three Theories: Classical, Object Relations and Self Psychology, Henry Nunberg, Jonathan E. Rosenfeld and William Czander,

Countertransferences II

When Self-Reflection and Interpretations Become Perverse, Leopold S. Vansina

Anxiety, Greed and Narcissism: Three Threats to the Consultant's Neutrality, Lou McIntyre

Transference, Counter-Transference and Organizational Change: A Study of the Relationship Between Organization and Consultant, Mannie Sher

Research

A Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis: The Common Ground of Psychoanalytic Practice, Kenneth Eisold

Principles and Practice Consulting with Organizations: How and Why We Do What We Do—or Should!, Harold Bridger

Issues in Management Research, and the Value of a Psychoanalytic Perspective: A Case Study of Organizational Stress in a Japanese Multi-National Company, Clare Huffington and Kim James

Holding the Center: Leadership, Depressive Position, Values and the Moral Order, Laurence J. Gould

Interface I

An Exploration of Cross-Gender Friendships in Organizations as a Source of Mirroring: A Pilot Study, Karen E. Lee, M.A.

Where's Daddy: Integrating the Paternal Metaphor Within the Maternal Tavistock Tradition of Organizational Thinking, Simon Western

Spurious Loyalty of Japanese Workers: In Search of Psychodynamics of Substitutive Mother in the Form of Organization, Naotaka Watanabe and, Koji Takahashi

Education I

Management Training Without Social Defenses: A Case Study of Case Studies, Terry Martin

Learning for Leadership Through the Shadow of the Valley of Death, Ernest Fruge

Interface II

The Social Induction of Emotional States: The Significance of Projective Identification in the Application of Social Systems Theory to Organizational Analysis and Consultation, Solomon Cytrynbaum, Ph.D., Vanessa Ruda, M.A.

Problematic Moments in Global Groups: Using the Concept of a Dialogic Unconscious to Help Develop Group Competence, James E. Cumming

Education II

Leaderly Learning: Understanding and Improving the Learning Capacity, Joseph F. Albert

Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Tasks of Formal Leadership Development, James M. Hunt

Plenary Presentation

Our Best Work Happens When We Don't Know What We're Doing, Robert French and Peter Simpson