On Edge

All of us work at the boundary. In fact, we work and live at multiple boundaries. We belong to numerous systems and relational networks. The idea of boundary is a metaphor for where and when we come into contact with each other as human subjects and objects — what Thomas Ogden calls “the primitive edge of experience.”

The idea and concept of boundaries are fundamental to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theories of object relations, individual psychology, group psychology, organizational psychology, and psycho-geography, as in large groups such as national, ethnic, religious, cultural, and racial identity groups — what Vamik Volkan calls “large group identity.” More precisely, boundaries signify the location and demarcation of our collective sense of self in relation to others and, in groups, to leadership.

Having psychological and infantile origins, boundaries are experienced in development by way of attachment, separation, and loss. And boundaries between self and other are navigated through states of emotional dependence and, later, relative independence and autonomy.

Psychological boundaries are signifiers of our essential paradox — what it means to be human. For example, boundaries are located between one's self and others, me and not-me, self and group, self and organization, self and body politic, subject and object, past and present, fantasy and reality, negative and positive, idealizing and loathing — what psychoanalysts call transferences and countertransferences of shared emotion. Boundaries are frequently experienced as filled with tension and opposition, possibly loaded with potential danger and conflict. With “good enough” caregiving and nurturing early on, boundaries and our experience of them come to signify a sense of we-ness. Such mutuality is a requisite for empathic organizational leadership and organizational culture, as opposed to that of narcissism stuck in ego and self-aggrandizement. In parallel with good enough