Private Selves in Public Organizations : The Psychodynamics of Organizational Diagnosis and Change

This book is about the psychodynamics of analyzing and changing organizations. Michael Diamond and Seth Allcorn define organizations as relational and experiential systems. They offer a contemporary psychoanalytic model for immersion, diagnosis, and intervention in organizations. The authors discover workers who view their organizations as silos—fragmented and dysfunctional. They come across workers who demand but rarely find organizations where they feel safe and secure enough to question authority or challenge the status quo. The authors address issues of oppression, persecution, moral violence, chaos, and workplace democracy. Case examples illustrate the collision of social and psychological structure in the workplace. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Preface......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction: Analyzing Organizations as Experiential and Relational Systems......Page 14 Part 1 Organizational Insight......Page 24 1 Layers of Experience: An Object Relational Model for Organizations......Page 26 2 Boundaries and Surfaces......Page 44 3 Silo Mentality......Page 62 4 Organizational Change and the Analytic Third......Page 86 5 Organizations as Defective Containers......Page 106 Part 2 Organizational Tumult......Page 120 6 Moral Violence......Page 122 7 Chaos and Complexity......Page 140 8 Shame, Oppression, and Persecution......Page 148 Part 3 Intervention and Reparation......Page 158 9 Shared Emotions: Transference and Countertransference......Page 160 10 Perversions of Democracy......Page 172 11 Immersion and Diagnosis......Page 188 Conclusion: Human Nature and Organizational Silos......Page 200 References......Page 206 About the Authors......Page 218 B......Page 220 C......Page 221 H......Page 222 M......Page 223 P......Page 224 T......Page 225 W......Page 226 This book is about the psychodynamics of analyzing and changing organizations. The authors define organizations as relational and experiential systems and they offer a contemporary psychoanalytic model for immersion, diagnosis, and intervention in organizations. The authors discover workers who view their organizations as silos{u2014}fragmented and dysfunctional. They come across workers who demand but rarely find organizations where they feel safe and secure enough to question authority or challenge the status quo. The authors address issues of oppression, persecution, moral violence, chaos, and workplace democracy. Case examples illustrate the collision of social and psychological structure in the workplace This book explores organizations as not simply rational, technological structures and networks for organizing people around tasks and services; it defines organizations as relational, experiential, and perceptual systems.