TWO BASIC ASSUMPTIONS IN THE PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF

ORGANIZATIONS (1)
André Schonberg

In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that the field of Psycho-analytic Study of
Organizations, which should put established wisdom and authoritative
arrangements into question, which should be radical, even subversive to the
established order, slides down into a cosy respectability and reassuring style.

I will not develop here the basic premise of my argument; let us take as one
starting point, as was done in the wave of the current attack on Freud AND
Psycho-analysis, that “….psychoanalysis is crucial for a truly democratic
culture to thrive….[it is a] vision of how one might both take human
irrationality seriously and participate in a democratic ideal…It is a technique
that allows dark meanings and irrational motivations to rise to the surface of
conscious awareness. They can then be taken into account; they can be
influenced by other considerations; and they become less liable to disrupt
human life in violent and incomprehensible ways.” ( Jonathan Lear, 1995 ), and
that whatever the school or strand we espouse in Psychoanalysis, it has to do
with search, and looking beside, or underneath, with questioning, etc. In
K.Eisold terms “Psychoanalysis, then, is not about what takes place between
two persons, or in a consulting room, (….).It is an area of investigation that is
defined by the limits of the rational, an instrumentality for PROBING
PROBLEMATIC EXPERIENCE” ( Eisold, 1995 - emphasis is mine A.S.)

The second starting point is that the application of psycho-analytic terms,

concepts, views, etc. to organizations is developing , whether as a new
discipline (Messer-Davidow, 1993 ) or a new paradigm (C.Harvey, 1982 ),
surely as a field of inquiry and practice.
The development of the field means that more people are engaged in activities,
sometimes converging, sometimes not, are rallying around some main concepts,
problems, type of discourse, etc. Along with that, also, are emerging some
classics, prominent figures, traditions, basic issues and controversies, etc.
One question often debated, and not yet clearly resolved, concerns the very
issue of whether we deal with psycho-analytical study OF organizations, or of
people working IN organizations, and what one exactly means by that (see, for
example, Armstrong ,1995, Bar-Lev Elieli, 1994, De Board, 1978, Eisler, 1995,
Obholzer and Roberts, 1994).

This is the scene: a powerful and growing invitation to use psycho-analytical

terms and apply them to the organization as a whole.
The performance, quite often, is somewhat disappointing , because of a
forceful, if not wholly conscious, mechanism.

CHANGE CONSULTANTS
Andre Schonberg 1
Looking at part of what is done and written nowadays in the field, one gets the
impression that there are some tacit understandings about what that field is, and
what we ought to do when practising. Following Bion’s terminology and way of
observation ( W.Bion, 1961 ), I will present here what can be called “ basic
assumptions ”, which seem quite prevalent among the practitioners of the
Psycho-analytical study of organizations. Basic Assumptions, because the
practitioners write AS IF they assume those statements or assumptions to be
true.

I will present here two of these assumptions, and then propose that we can
meaningfully engage in the Psycho-analytical study of organizations without
resorting to them.

1. THE BASIC ASSUMPTION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PRIMACY -

PSYCHOLOGICAL REDUCTIONISM

May be the most pervasive basic assumption in the field is the tacit belief that
psychological factors ( couched in psycho-analytic terms ) are so important in
the determination of organizational behaviour, that any other factors in the life
and analysis of organization, are barely mentioned, and so not examined, and
weighted for their mutual and relative influence.
It is as if the Psycho-analytical consultant is completely blind to, or ignorant of
those factors deemed, in the ( non-psychological ) literature about organizations,
to be crucial and elementary in the understanding of organizational dynamics.
By keeping this exclusive psychological focus, the Psycho-analytical consultant
reduces the organization to a field of psychological conflicts and forces, and
completely wipes out the substratum of power, position, differential access to
resources and decision making, rewards, relationships with the environment,
culture, climate, etc.
If a director of Engineering struggles with a Director of Marketing - shall we
look for psychological reasons, and probe some hidden conflicts, or examine the
here and now dynamics with the consultant - when we know that Directors of
Engineering always struggle with Directors of Production, because it is a built
in, structural tension in organizations, and is not directly dependent on any
psychological characteristics of any of the persons concerned.

Another way to bypass the place of non-purely psychological factors in the life
of the organization, is to deal with universal, existential dimensions , such as
anxiety, or depressive feelings ( for example, the classical work of Menzies-
Lyth,1959, or G.Lawrence, 1995 ). In so far as they are presented as all
inclusive, pervasive elements of organization life, they leave no rule for the
study of an historic, unique situation: that sweeping, grand theory pre-empts any
particular case, and assumes that any other factor, in fact, does not make the
slightest difference.

CHANGE CONSULTANTS
Andre Schonberg 2
 The question one may raise is not how Psycho-analytic concepts and viewpoint
can or should REPLACE ( substitute for ) other views of organization, but what
can Psycho-analytic concepts ADD to those views, and may be re-place them,
enrich them with an additional perspective. That would be a task for new
theoretical and research developments of psycho-analytic concepts: not just
mentioning Bion’s early works on groups, but developing his and others’
insights in the psychic reality of organizations and groups; linking this work to
the extensive literature on Organizational Culture, for example.

2. THE BASIC ASSUMPTION OF UNITY & REPRESENTATION -

PSEUDO-SYSTEMIC MONISM

This Basic Assumption is perhaps not less pervasive than the previous one, but
is more intricate. It is the tacit belief and assumption that all the dynamics, or
the whole dynamics of the Organization is in fact represented into one of its
parts. For example, this assumption has it that if you work with the head of an
Organization, or if you work with one segment of the Organization, for
example, a certain level of management, it is AS IF you work with the
Organization as a whole. It is as if the whole dynamics of the Organization is
(re)present(ed) in the Head of the general manager, or of any manager who
happens to work with the consultant. (see, for example, D.Armstrong, 1991).
What kind of Organization can answer to that very special criteria ?
There is here in the hiding a monistic, ‘microcosm’ assumption, like an
‘homunculus’ in which all the variety, differences, interrelations, etc. of the
whole, are present and represented in one part ! In fact, this view which is
surreptitiously present in most one-on-one practice of the Psycho-analysis of
organizations, really means one of the following:
a) either it is a rejection of the very concept of open system: the system
really is NOT important, you don’t have to work with the whole; you
might as well work only with a privileged, so-called representative, part of
it !
b) or, it shows that in fact we just work with Psycho-analytical concepts
and we apply them to people IN Organizations. We do not in fact, in so far
as this assumption is implemented, Psycho-analyze organizations: we just
psycho-analyze Managers in their role as Managers ( but then, where do
we stop the analysis, and why should they get it as a fringe benefit….?).

Moreover, that assumption, also, just like the previous one, denies the role of
Power, and its influence on positions, roles, beliefs, attitudes, strategies:
everything is (represented) in the (head) of the General manager…..
What is repressed here, what is hidden, is the reality of domination, of power, of
power relations within the Organization ( see also Paul Hoggett pertinant

CHANGE CONSULTANTS
Andre Schonberg 3
remarks on power in his review of _The Unconscious at Work_, published in
_Free Associations_, 1996).
In this methodology, who can really put in question the place, role and
mechanisms of authority, of domination ! The stance adopted by this kind of
psycho-analytic study seems a very ideological, functionalist, elitist, conformist,
“pro-establishment”, dominant and simplified view of an organization, which
will never lead to troubling questions or to a re-assessment of the statu-quo.

3. WORKING WITHOUT THOSE ASSUMPTIONS

It seems to me that it is possible, may be even necessary, to undertake psycho-

analytical study of, and work with, organizations, WITHOUT assuming any of
those assumptions, and that the results can be quite interesting and rewarding.
The problem is not really with the application of the main principles of
analytical work: ( 1) the presence of the analyst, 2) working with and through
transference and countertransference, 3) work on the here and now, 4) the
search for hidden and repressed meanings and motivations ).
I believe the main challenge is to put as our client, or target, the Organization
itself, not just a person WITHIN the organization, whatever her /his role, or a
defined and special stratum in it. It then would be more easy to look at the
organization as an organization, not just as a disembodied field of psychological
forces, or a just a place where feelings, interpretations and meanings somehow
hover over twoo or more persons.

Two ‘classical’ streams of work embody those principles: the Glacier project
( E.Jaques , 1956), with its continuous work with the Organization as a whole,
not only Top Management, but also middle management, Workers
representatives and councils, etc.
The other strand being the so-called Leicester Conference, or Tavistock tradition
conference ( Rice ,1965; Miller, 1989 ). That type of Conference strives to work
with the organization - of the Conference - as a whole, including Management
and Staff; no one there dreams to claim that working with ONE small Group ( it
tends to be called sub-system, nowadays, following Gordon Lawrence
conception ), or only with one of the Institutional Event sub-groups, is enough !
We know there that no single part ever represents the whole !, even if
representations and links and interconnections are intensively sought for, maybe
sometimes even imposed on the facts.
The conference design by itself does not pre-empt the possibility of falling into
the two Basic Assumptions mentioned earlier. In fact, more than one such
conference has fallen prey to psychologistic or monistic overgeneralizations.
But, a Conference in which ‘Authority’, or rather the Conference’s

CHANGE CONSULTANTS
Andre Schonberg 4
MANAGEMENT - in the ‘here and now’ of the Conference - is not challenged
is, in fact, a waste of time - or just an elaborated T-Group experience !

It seems that our developing field of Psycho-analytic study of Organizations,

has, for now, made a full circle. Rice (1969) proposed “to apply to individual
and group behaviour the system theory of organization, normally used for the
analysis of enterprise processes”. Now it seems that we tend to apply to the
analysis of enterprise and organizations processes, concepts developed from
individual and group behaviour.
I have suggested here that this reversal of concept application does not really
enhances our understanding of organizations, but rather empoverishes and
masks some potentially disruptive understandings.

1. This is part of a paper discussed at the May 1996 meeting of ICS -

Innovation and Change in Israeli Society, the first organization which sponsors
an annual Tavistock tradition Conference in Israel, from 1987 on.
I thank Yossi Triest for some comments on an earlier draft.

CHANGE CONSULTANTS
Andre Schonberg 5
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. Armstrong, The Institution in the Mind, 1991
D. Armstrong, The Analytic Object in Organisational Work, 1995
R. Bar-Lev Elieli, Psychoanalytic Thinking and Organizations, 1994
W.R. Bion, Experiences in Groups, 1961
H. Bridger, The Kinds of “Organizational Development” required for working
at the level of the….1980
R. De Board, The Psychoanalysis of Organizations, 1978
K.Eisold, Psychoanalysis Today: Implications for organizational Applications”,
1995
C. Harvey, The use and abuse of Kuhnian paradigms in the Sociology of
Knowledge, 1982
P. Hoggett, Review of _The Unconscious at Work_, 1996
E. Jaques, The Changing Culture of a Factory, 1956
J. Lear, A Counterblast in the War on Freud: the Shrink is In, 1995
G. Lawrence, The presence of Totalitarian states-of-Mind in Institutions, 1995
E. Messer-Davidow et al. (eds.), Knowledge: Historical and Critical Studies in
Disciplinarity, 1993
E. Miller, Task and Organization, 1976
E. Miller, The “Leicester” Model, 1989
I. Menzies Lyth, The Functioning of Social Systems as Defence against
Anxiety, 1959
A. Obholzer and V.Z. Roberts (eds.), The unconscious at Work: Individual and
Organizational Stress in the Human Services, 1994
A.K. Rice, Learning for Leadership, 1965
A.K. Rice, Individual, Group and Intergroup Processes, 1969

 André SCHONBERG, Conseiller de Synthèse, Management Consultant

CHANGE CONSULTANTS
P.O.B. 822 Ra’anana 43 107 ISRAEL
TEL: 972 9 435 097 FAX: 972 9 98 75 85
6 av. de Jericho Braine-L’Alleud 1420 BELGIUM
TEL: 32 2 354 35 81 FAX: 32 2 354 34 86

e-mail: andre@ Actcom.co.il

CHANGE CONSULTANTS
Andre Schonberg 6