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This is a wonderfully engaging book, written out of a passionate attachment to the value that a psychoanalytic perspective can bring to our human engagements in the workplace. Written by a professional, trained within a tradition many readers of this journal will be familiar with, it is, however, not to this kind of audience that the book is primarily addressed. Rather it is written to and for the generic reader at work, who may at times find herself wondering or needing to wonder about the life that is going on at work, and her or his involvement within it, out of curiosity or puzzlement or the need to find resolution or counsel.
These twin strands, the passionate engagement and the generic audience have shaped the evolution of Gabriella Braun's idea of the book from the outset, determining its form, its tone, and its focus, though not always predictably. The result, I think, is something quite unique in what I might call “our field” and which, whilst not written for this field, nonetheless offers a level of attentive observation and description that is continually adding something to more familiar accounts, promoting questions or drawing attention to features, aspects of involvement that we may more usually bracket out or ignore.
The book covers a wide range of Braun's experiences as a consultant, working with teams, with boards, with coaching clients, with pairs in mediation, and across diverse organisational contexts and cultures, both public and private. The chapters pick up on one or other psychoanalytically charged theme, often signalled implicitly in the chapter headings: Safety and security; Life and death; Another side of aggression; The looking glass; Barriers and barricades; Good enough; Paranoia; The poison of envy; Turning a blind eye; Repeating patterns; The hidden difficulties of succession; Illusion; Being ourselves.
Each theme, with one or two important exceptions, starting from Gabriella's own more personal history and experience, emerges out of, and