You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper represents a preliminary statement concerning health, and presence or absence at work. It also advocates a new technical use of the word ‘retainment’ as a development of emotional containment for the work task. The paper explores and makes use of Bion's idea of basic assumptions affiliated to the proto-mental system of the psyche-soma linked to specific immunological failure developed by Meltzer and by Tustin's work on the prenatal aspects of autistic personalities. These issues are illustrated from consultancy work with organizations relating absence from the work task to the health of the organization and its capacity to manage the risk of regression. This work has been done under the auspices of the Work Force Health: Research and Consultation and its project on ‘Sourcing authority and leadership in promoting healthy ways of going sick’.
Issues raised by this work are also illustrated by cartoons.
Cartoons Copyright © Richard Morgan-Jones 2006 and © Dylan Barwick tiptoptoons.com
This paper was developed from a presentation made to the Opus Annual conference 2005.