Managing Primitive Emotions in Organizations

Abstract

The psychic life of organizations is often fraught with distress and unhappiness. Often, the primary task of the organization is hijacked by deeper, primitive, unconscious forces, to divert the work towards more destructive functioning. This article describes three main dynamics in the organizational life of a voluntary organization, which can lead to the acting out of deeper sexual and aggressive impulses. These dynamics focus on how erotic, idealized, and envied relationships can significantly interfere with sane, civilized, and humane behaviour in everyday organizational life. These dynamics are highlighted through three examples of organizational traumas. This article suggests ways of understanding and resolving these conflicts, and most importantly suggests that failure to recognize such powerful unconscious organizational forces will lead to unproductive and ultimately destructive functioning.

Towards a Group Analytic Praxis for Working with Teams in Organizations

“…Although power may not be equally distributed in an organization, if the right conditions can be negotiated (mainly if anxiety can be kept within reasonable bounds) the process of team communication facilitated by a group analyst will tend towards an equality of interaction. This enables understanding of a situation in the round, and allows the managed to feel more valued, and the manager to be more comfortable with disagreement and diverse views (Kapur, 2009). It is closely aligned to the value of difference.…”

The stress of work, with bonus vaudeville section

“…The resulting tensions loosely translate into the Freudian concept of the reality principle, as they imply a resisting of our moment-to-moment impulses towards pleasure. 1 Such a psychoanalytic approach to the investigation of the stress of work was later taken up by Elliot Jaques 2 and others ‘…to pay serious attention to the intrapsychic and interpersonal processes within any organization’ 3 including workplaces.…”