Psychodynmic Psychotherapy and Executive Coaching—Overlapping Paradigms

There is a growing trend among psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically trained therapists of working as occupational coaches in corporate environments, industry, and public organizations. This is a legitimate focus, since psychoanalytic psychotherapy has always been concerned with effecting behavioral change and with the adaptational process. Psychoanalysts as coaches focus on the competence of individuals in complex organizational cultures, as well as the individual's own experience of effectiveness or lack of it. Psychoanalytically trained therapists have a knowledge base that predisposes them to be effective in working with people in complex organizations. For example, coaching is facilitated by a coach's appreciation for the complexities of depth psychology, the operation of conflict, and the resistance to change. Moreover, we have extensive experience in the subtleties of interpersonal interaction and communication. We understand the structure of character, how it is shaped, and how it preserves its configuration in the presence of pressures for change. We are also concerned with how changes in values in the workplace affect the values that govern the personal and family lives of our patients, often for the worse (Sennett, 1998).

Psychoanalysis's focus on the problems of the work environment is not at all new. For example, the ego psychologist H. Levinson (1968) has written extensively about problems of executive management since the late 1960s, and his group, the Levinson Group, is a leader in consulting this area. The Tavistock Group has brought its understanding of the problems of group organization to bear on the study of corporate environments. One group, the “International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations,” meets annually and has been active for a number of years. One influential writer about personality and organization is the former Kleinian psychoanalyst, Jaques (Jaques and Clement,