An Interview with Isabel Menzies Lyth with a Conceptual Commentary

In February 2002, the authors interviewed Isabel Menzies Lyth on her approach to consultancy and her working methods. As an early member of the Tavistock Institute and author of several seminal papers in this area of work, Isabel was invited to re-visit and review the development and evolution of her practice over the course of her lengthy career as a psychoanalyst and organizational consultant. In the process, she underlined her views about the guiding principles underpinning her approach to consultancy and their development over time. She also commented — in part, critically — about the influence of her writings on contemporary consultancy practices. In the following, this interview has been significantly edited and re-organized in relation to key themes, with the conclusion providing a commentary and contextualization in relation to relevant theoretical literature. However, so far as possible, in the first part of this article, the intention has been to retain the freshness and immediacy of the original, oral, nature of the text.

The Tavistock model of organizations and consultancy is a highly theoretically driven paradigm. The paradigm has evolved from the work of the Tavistock Institute and Clinic over the last fifty years and more. Palmer (2002) has constructed an account of the paradigm and its evolution. According to Palmer ‘the Tavistock paradigm is an action research paradigm, drawing upon several social science disciplines’. Its purpose was defined retrospectively by Emery (in Trist and Murray, 1993) as ‘the mutual enrichment of social science and practical