The systems psychodynamic experiences of first-year master’s students in industrial and organisational psychology

Abstract

Orientation:The researchers described the experiences of first-year master's students in industrial and organisational psychology in terms of their anxiety and basic assumption behaviour. Apart from their academic tasks, they seem to be unconsciously involved in many relationship and relatedness matters.Research purpose: The purpose of this research was to describe the systems psychodynamic experiences of first-year master's students in Industrial and Organisational Psychology.Motivation for the study: Academic staff members tend to forget their own experiences as master's students, lose touch with their students' experiences, lose empathy and treat student groups in mechanistic ways. Although the students' conscious tasks and roles are relatively clear, very little is known about their unconscious experiences.Research design, approach and method: The researchers used qualitative research involving a case study. They collected the data and conducted their analyses by administering a Listening Post (LP) and discourse analysis. Two themes emerged, from which the researchers formulated their working and research hypotheses. Main findings:The themes related to anxiety and basic assumption behaviour. The research hypothesis referred to students' introjections of emotional incompetence. This resulted in exhaustion. Practical/managerial implications:More focused attention to the students' emotional experiences, by themselves and by academic staff members, could conserve students' energy for their academic work and relationships.Contribution/value-add: Being master's students consumes emotional energy that jeopardises students' academic work and forming relationships. Being aware of these and managing them could help students to achieve better academically.

Coping Dynamics of Consulting Psychology Doctoral Students Transitioning a Professional Role Identity: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective

“…In psychodynamic theory, rationalisation and intellectualisation are regarded as mature defence mechanisms [ 45 , 71 ]. Through these mechanisms, the students suppressed emotions and proposed rational arguments to explain or describe their experiences.…”

“…In working with their professional identity, students show fear of incompetence as well as anxiety in relation to preserving the self. Such fear and anxiety are defined as performance and survival anxiety [ 30 ] and are typically also found in other system psychodynamic studies working with identity construction [ 26 , 45 , 72 ]. To deal with their performance and survival anxieties, the three themes constructed in the findings describe the students’ coping dynamics from a system psychodynamic stance in terms of basic assumption or anti-task behaviour, primary and sophisticated psychodynamic defences.…”

“…This paper takes the stance that coping is a process of psychological adjustment [ 42 , 43 ] that includes conscious and unconscious coping as means of adaptation [ 33 , 34 , 44 ]. Applying a system psychodynamic stance to understand coping is of value, since it provides a more holistic and systemic understanding of coping behaviour [ 45 ] and uncovers the unconscious as a creative source of knowledge [ 23 , 46 ]. When experiences are explored from a systems psychodynamic stance, one can enhance awareness, understanding and learning of both conscious and unconscious dynamics [ 47 , 48 ].…”

The psychological well-being manifesting among master’s students in Industrial and Organisational Psychology

“…These students seem to cope well cognitively -their intellectual competence serves as a selection criterion, they rate the coursework content and the facilitator inputs as cognitively challenging, and they have an above-average pass rate. In contrast, in terms of emotional coping, a recent systems psychodynamic study (Cilliers & Harry, 2012) on students in this specific first-year part-time coursework master's degree programme illustrated their high levels of performance anxiety, emotional exhaustion, introjected emotional and relational incompetence, a sense of not being good enough and therefore pretending to be happy, resilient and coping well to impress their lecturers. The above was interpreted as evidence that students experience their first-year part-time coursework as extremely emotionally demanding in terms of their endurance to stay in the programme, self-efficacy to manage the academic matters and resilience to balance their academic, organisational and personal roles.…”

Selection of industrial and organisational psychology master’s students: Exploring the predictive validity of a person–job fit approach

“…In their 2016 study, Cilliers and Flotman raised concerns that, even though most of the selected students in the IO psychology coursework master's degree seemed to have passed the M1 part of the degree, only 60% of these students completed the M2 part of the programme, resulting in an overall lower throughput rate (cf. Cilliers & Harry, 2012).…”