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Harry Levinson is one of a very small group of consultants who pioneered the systemic application of psychoanalysis to the study of organizations, essentially bringing what is now a burgeoning field into existence. This carefully and lovingly assembled collection honors his work of over fifty years as a practitioner, theorist, educator, and mentor. It tells us much about him and the field as they have evolved together.
In the early years of his work at the Menninger Foundation, he initiated studies of utilities, hospitals, and prisons in Kansas, not only to help such organizations become more effective but also to demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalytic concepts to organizations. Along the way, he developed and refined his ideas and methods, encouraging and inspiring many to take up this work. Subsequently in Cambridge, Massachusetts, based at Harvard Medical School, as well as at the Levinson Institute, which he founded, he taught future leaders and trained several generations of consultants to see more deeply into organizational life while also continuing to pursue an active consulting practice.
His writings emphasize over and over the key role of “diagnosis,” the topic of his magnum opus, Organizational Diagnosis, originally published in 1976. By “diagnosis” Levinson does not mean anything like a DSM category. Rather, his idea is more like a “clinical formulation” or “assessment,” an overview that frames the problems to be addressed in the course of an organizational intervention. He refers continually to the “working hypotheses” that he makes and remakes in the course of a consultation, the set of ideas that guide him. This is essential for a number of reasons: organizations are complex objects, and inevitably the consultant's angle of vision shifts as he encounters different parts; moreover,