Lost In Familiar Places. Creating New Connections Between The Individual And Society.: By Edward R. Shapiro and A. Wesley Carr. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1991. 193 pp.

This is an organizational self-help book which examines the relationship between individual and society and offers tools to facilitate the development of meaningful connections between individuals and the institutions to which they belong. It is written by Edward Shapiro, the Director of Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Wesley Carr, the Dean of Bristol Cathedral in England.

Both authors have had considerable experience as professional consultants in a variety of organizational settings. The authors suggest that rapid social and environmental change has wreaked havoc in organizations, resulting in the intensification of conflict among members of different rank and status and in the diminution of a sense of common purpose. Feeling unsure of their roles, unconnected to their organizations, and alienated from each other, individuals experience a sense of being “lost in familiar places.”

The authors argue that organizational reform and the development of significant connections among institutional members can be accomplished if consultants and members employ “the interpretive stance” to analyze the situation and make recommendations. The interpretative stance involves identifying individual experience in the context of a role and using such experience with that of others to create “negotiated interpretations” about the organization. The interpretive stance shares with clinical psychoanalysis a concern with unconscious dynamics, affect, and individual subjectivity, and it recognizes that transference and countertransference play a key role in understanding. Consultants do not simply observe behavior and comment on it; instead, they reflect on their internal experience to create hypotheses about the current activity of the group as a whole.

The interpretive stance differs from traditional psychoanalytic approaches because it recognizes that social interactions play an independent role in defining individual experience. The authors illustrate this poin