‘Who's Afraid of the Organisation’?: ‘Angst’ in Organisational Life and What (If Anything) to Do about it: Keynote Paper Presented at OPUS Conference, London, 19-20 November 2010

Psychoanalytic psychotherapist, consultant, coach, and supervisor. He trained as a psychotherapist at the Tavistock Institute and Tavistock Clinic, while working as head of the Family Day unit of the Marlborough Hospital. Since 1982 he has been working in Munich in private practice both as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families and as a supervisor and consultant both in the public and the private spheres. Starting in 1980, he was one of the main initiators and founder member of both the Wilfred R. Bion Forum for the Furtherance of Psychoanalysis and of MundO (which in German stands for Menschen und Organisationen), a working group dedicated to the furtherance of Group Relations work in German speaking Europe. He has published many and various articles in German and English on topics such as infant observation according to the Tavistock-Bick method. Recent publications have included a critique of the leadership styles of both George W. Bush, and Joerg Haider, an analysis of ‘followership’ as a necessary precondition of leadership, and a ‘biological/theological/developmental psychological analysis of “fair trade” as opposed to “unfair trade”’. Over the last thirty years he has served as a staff member and Director on a large number of group relations conferences in Germany, as well as in England, Israel, and Norway.