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Eric Miller is an author who has an important place as a guide to our understanding of organizations and their behaviour and whose contributions have given him a quite unique position and status at the epicentre of a new discipline. Any book by him has to be taken seriously for the new ideas it can offer which extend our knowledge of the functioning of complex groups.
In the preface to this, his latest publication, Miller says, ‘action research is clinical research’, and the book, much of the material for which has developed out of his studies at the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, is very much about putting this concept into practice.
Miller suggests an important distinction between the role of the internal and external consultant. The latter allows for independence and, in his view, greater autonomy and integrity. This paradigm runs like a golden thread throughout the book and in part accounts for the title From Dependency to Autonomy. In the first chapter, ‘Values and concepts’, Miller draws on the thinking of Klein, Bion, Lewin, Rice, Lawrence and others to illustrate his intellectual ground plan. Part 2, ‘People preceding processing institutions’, considers three studies of people. Some of the information published in this chapter has been printed earlier and has made fascinating re-reading in this new publication.
The work referred to in Part 3, ‘Analysis and diagnosis’, I found particularly enjoyable, the description of the work of the Church of England especially as I was in a similar situation for 10 years, running a clergy support group, and can therefore absolutely agree with Miller's statement that ‘many curates fear they are in difficult and isolated positions in their parishes and welcome the opportunity to compare roles with others’ (p. 112). This sense of isolation, I am sure, can also be well recognized by psychotherapists in private practice.
In Part 4, ‘Process of development and change’, Miller addresses a fundamental premise: if you wish sy