On the Dynamics of Social Structure

So Much More Than a Job: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Healthcare Work

“…The psychoanalytic approach to studying organizations has a long and varied history, beginning with Freud's own social theorizing (Freud, 1913;1921;1927;1930) and continuing with the seminal contributions of members of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (Jacques, 1953;Trist and Sofer, 1959;Menzies Lyth, 1960;Bion, 1961). Now in its third generation of scholars and practitioners, the Tavistock Institute continues to advance scholarship in organization theory and behavior (e.g., Aram and Baxter, 2009), as do the closely related organizations of The A. K. Rice Institute (ARKI), and the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO) (e.g., Sievers, 2009).…”

Can individual psychology explain social phenomena? An appraisal of the theory of cultural complexes

“…Awareness of its limitations and justifications for mobilizing a psychology of the individual to understand groups, abound (Armstrong, 2005;Bion, 1952;Behr and Hearst, 2005;Foulkes, 1965;Frosh, 2010), as do attempts to adapt depth psychological concepts to elucidate the psychological processes of specific groups (Hinshelwood, 1997;Jacques, 1953;Skynner, 1991). Most authors engaged in this interdisciplinary endeavour recognize that they may be encroaching upon other disciplines -among them sociology, anthropology and history -the raison d'être of which is to understand collectives.…”

Choice is yours: A psychodynamic exploration of health policymaking and its consequences for the English National Health Service

“…I will look at the role of public institutions as containers of unwanted and/or inadmissible societal anxieties and the defensive behaviour this function gives rise to on the organizational level. To this effect, I will also critically apply the psychoanalytic approaches to institutionally sanctioned defences against anxiety generated by the work task, which were first recognized by Jacques (1953) and Menzies (1960) as deep-seated barriers to change what Bain (1998) termed as 'system domain'. Finally, I will explore individual-level patient-doctor/nurse relationships using concepts of transference and counter-transference (Balint, 1957), and the Kleinian elaborations on regression to primary dependency (Klein, 1952) and envy (Klein, 1957).…”

“…In her object relation theory, Klein (1952) expanded on splitting and denial mechanisms in relation to individual mental functions, and others have applied this theory to understanding group dynamics (Jacques, 1953;Bion, 1961;Hinshelwood, 1987). According to Bion (1961), unconscious individual anxieties of annihilation of the self and/or the loved object are at the root of group dynamics and recurrent irrational behaviours by group members.…”

“…Later on, Bion (1967) theorized on the role of aggressive impulses manifested in envious murderous attacks on others, on the self and on the meaningful group work, which he termed as attacks on linking. Elliott Jacques (1953) was the first to apply the concept of transference to understand the relationship between the individual and the organization, and to hypothesize on the nature of the socially sanctioned collective defences that organizations enacted to protect themselves against anxieties created by the work task. The main characteristic of institutionalized defences was that they facilitated the evasion of anxiety in the short run, without contributing to its modification or resolution.…”