Since 1980 the ‘Consulting to Institutions’ workshop at the Tavistock Clinic in London has brought together a number of influences to develop insights for working with organisations experiencing particular psychological stress. The Tavistock Clinic is a natural home for the integration of psychoanalytic perspectives and open-systems theory, stimulated by the theoretical contributions of Bion and the experiential tradition of group-relations training.

This volume gives us an opportunity to look at effects of this integration. The group-relations tradition is clearly influential. Eleven of the fourteen contributors have been staff members of experiential conferences in the Tavistock tradition. Seven contributors are psychoanalytic psychotherapists and two are psychoanalysts in private practice.

Kranz, in the foreword—reporting an important link with the US tradition and in particular the