An individual's working life undergoes the same intrapsychic conflicts as other aspects of experience. Yet, as a subject of psychoanalytic inquiry, the world of work has largely been ignored. In this innovative book, William M. Czander demonstrates that applying depth psychology to the organization and its employees provides a deeper understanding of the American workplace than traditional industrial psychology has offered. Using a psychoanalytic framework, Czander examines such issues as interactions between employees and management, the conscious and unconscious forces that bind fellow employees together, and the role of autonomy in people's lives. Most important, he details a means of intervention in the form of organizational consultation based on this more profound conceptualization of the dynamics of the workplace. The first section of the book presents theoretical background, and the second applies theory to specific cases. Czander presents three major theories of psychoanalysis as they relate to work and the organization: Freudian and classical psychoanalytic theory, object relations theory, and self psychology theory. He explores how a psychoanalyst thinks about work and how work and the organization interact with the employees' unconscious motivations and ideation. He then applies these theories to actual case studies of organizational consultations. The consultation process is explained, including how a particular diagnosis and rationale for intervention is obtained. Czander concludes with a discussion of the practice of psychoanalytic consulting and its utility and relevance to the world of contemporary organizations. Providing illuminating discussion on myriad issues related to the psychology of the workplace, this book is an ideal resource for a variety of mental health professionals: psychoanalysts especially interested in organizational consulting, organizational psychologists desiring a new perspective on their work, and clinicians from different disciplines whose clients are struggling with issues surrounding their work environments. It serves as an advanced text for courses in industrial organization, clinical and social work, and business management.

This book gives in-depth insights into the core issues of workplace bullying from the perspectives of the individuals involved, their interpersonal relationships, the group dynamics and organisational contexts. Workplace bullying is costly: increasingly petty conflicts are being registered as formal complaints and, in no time, legalities take over and costs spiral out of control. Preventive actions and interventions need to be based on a sound knowledge of the deeper issues which foster bullying scenarios. This book gets to the roots of why and how bullying occurs. Four main chapters are devoted to individuals, interpersonal relationships, group dynamics, and organisational contexts. The fifth chapter is a case study of the 'turn round' of a workplace in which bullying was rife. There are three recurring themes: recognition, loss, and space. New ways of conceptualising bullying are presented from drawing on the literature on the subject, as well as a range of psychodynamics theories. Bullying is described as a perverse and pernicious form of projective identification, occurring around organisational vacuums and structural fractures.

Author note: Larry Hirschhorn is Principal of the Center for Applied Research, Inc., a faculty member at the William Alanson White Institute's Program on Organizational Development and Consultation, and the author of several books, including The Workplace Within. Carole K. Barnett is a Ph.D. candidate in the Organizational Psychology Program at the University of Michigan and co-editor of Globalizing Management: Creating and Leading the Competitive Organization.

This Festschrift has been compiled by Sanchen Henning in honour of the work of Professor Frans Cilliers. On behalf of colleagues and friends in South Africa and abroad, she illustrates their appreciation and respect for his role as scholar in Systems Psychodynamics. He produced various pioneering research projects in Organisational Psychology as his field of study, through the Systems Psychodynamic lens. A specific feature and contribution of the book is the application of Systems Psychodynamics to organisational matters and leadership consulting as well as to the lived experiences of postgraduate students and academics. The chapters include themes relevant on individual, group and organisational levels and are intended to contribute to the body of knowledge in the field.

Understanding experience at work, especially in toxic organizations, is a multidimensional undertaking that must include all senses. The use of applied poetry has its primary value as an evocative approach to sensing, knowing, and understanding workplace experience. Poetry at its best condenses into relatively few words, metaphors, and images what conventional social science narratives would take much longer to articulate. Where poetry often hints and alludes, narrative seeks to spell out, expound, and complete. Where poetry leaves much mental space for the listener or reader to fill in with one’s imagination, narrative fills in the spaces with rich detail. Applied poetry and its contextual stories offer a way of accessing workplace experience that is unique and valuable in terms of understanding lives at work. The use of complementary psychodynamic theories, like all theories, is a way of trying to account for what we have found and experienced and in particular why it happened. "Why," the authors suggest, is critical in terms of understanding the sensing, images, and metaphors evoked by the poetry and stories that may resonate with hearers and readers for reasons that are unconscious and are rooted in the past. These transferences that come forward from life experience into the present are the critical data we work with. These are the data of psychoanalysis. This book both widens and deepens the scope of organizational research offered by other researchers, theorists, and approaches to understanding, interpreting, explaining, leading, and consulting with workplace organizations. Its triangulating integration of applied poetry, experience and stories behind the poetry, and the three psychoanalytic models of explaining life in workplaces, is a new and distinct contribution to organizational research, leadership, and consulting efforts to help organization members solve real, underlying problems and not offer simplistic, formulaic solutions based solely on a study of the organization’s surface. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of organizational studies, leadership, and management.

Discover a wealth of issues in the field of consulting psychologywith this landmark book. Explore key topics in assessment andevaluation, building teams, executive coaching, career counseling,interpersonal conflicts and relationships, benefit design,personality testing, and much more. Learn to delineate and betterunderstand the wide array of information you are faced with, andbecome more adept and knowledgeable in the field of consultingpsychology. This comprehensive volume has expert contributorsrecruited by the volume's editor--himself an eminent educator andpractitioner in the field. You will get: * Special issues in consulting to specific types of organizationsincluding industry, schools, government, non-profit, andinternational * Informative guidelines for professional practiceprocedures * Organized sections on individual, group and organizationalissues * And much more!

Describing the field, spanning individual, organisation societal and cultural perspectives in a cross-disciplinary manner, this is the premier reference tool for students lecturers, academics and practitioners to gather knowledge about a range of important topics from the perspective of organisation studies.

This authoritative source book on the learning and creative application of the systems psychodynamic perspective defines the field, presenting the key concepts, models, and social methodologies that derive from it, together with their theoretical and conceptual underpinnings in psychoanalysis, group relations and open systems theory.

The Psychology of Organizations and Workplace Issues: Resolving Everyday Conflicts introduces theories about the psychic life of organizations. It differentiates and clarifies both the objective structural elements and the subjective emotional elements. The objective part involves the conditions emerging from the describable features of the organization. The subjective perspective addresses the often more hidden emotional influences and manifestations in the organization: this will be amplified by what is now termed the psychology and social psychology of organizations. Contributions from leading authors in the field will cover the following themes: the organization in the tension field of psychic life and as a field of emotional experiences, individual and group unconscious, regular and irregular psychological processes and their influence on daily work functions, organization’s environment, specific concepts of the psychology of organizations, organizations and workplace issues, social sciences, and social psychology. This book is written for everyone interested in the field of organizations. It shows how psychological processes occur in organizations and how they cast their influence throughout.

Organizational Transformation for Sustainability: An Integral Metatheory offers some innovative answers to the big questions involved in organizational sustainability and the radical changes that organizations will need to undergo as we move into the third millennium. This new approach comes from the new field of integral metatheory.