Social Organization of Secrets

DEAR SIR,

In his paper 'The Social Organization of Secrets' (Int. Rev. Psychoanal., 12:143–159), Michael Rustin says, 'There seems to be evidence that the advance of psychoanalytically-based knowledge in the organizational field has been held back by a pervasive culture of private consultancy (in the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations for example) which has led to very restricted publication of research findings, and thus little wider dissemination of them'.

May I please correct this? It is true that in certain limited areas, such as Market Research, private consultancy may limit publication since the aim of those commissioning the research is to obtain information which will give them an advantage over their competitors and publication would clearly destroy this advantage. Even in this field a lapse of time would often remove this limitation.

But the majority of the work of the Tavistock Institute had not been in this field. For over ten years, while at the Institute, I directed a programme of research into Social Policy which involved the application of psychoanalytic concepts to issues such as the transition from school to work, poverty and unemployment. This was financed firstly by a private trust and secondly on a larger scale by the government and publication was positively encouraged by both these sources who had clearly nothing to gain and everything to lose by the suppression of results.

Some impediments to publication have arisen; analytic approaches are not always welcome in non-analytic journals and some publishers prefer books that can be used on academic courses. However, as you know, a paper of mine describing the application of psychoanalytic concepts to (inter alia) education, poverty and unemployment was turned down by the International Review of Psycho-Analysis. Perhaps this is the phenomenon that Dr Steiner had in mind when he referred in his paper to those who 'turn a blind