As we enter the new millennium, many of us seek to expand the scope and application of our professional training beyond the couch and the consulting room. Managed care, a diversity of experience prior to becoming an analyst, actual responsibility in organizational settings, and a greater interest within the organizational world in unconscious processes have attracted many of us to apply our understanding as psychoanalysts to the world of work.
Organizations, businesses, and executives have long sought out assistance from human behaviorists trained in organizational development and personality assessment. These individuals, while helpful in focusing on the human side of organizational life, have rarely considered or understood how developmental issues and unconscious feelings affect people in the corporate and organizational world.
As psychoanalysts trained in the psychology of the individual and unconscious processes, we have traditionally listened to our patients talk about their work world and organizational life. We have guided them with psychoanalytic perspective to appreciate the unconscious forces that affect them and those with whom they work. Psychoanalysts have a unique and valuable asset to share in consulting to the organizational world: our training in depth psychology and the unconscious.
The American has established the Ad Hoc Committee for Corporate and Organizational Consultation to promote and support members interested in going beyond the consulting room to work with and consult to the organizational world. From the committee's recent survey of psychoanalytic institutes and societies and from our own anecdotal inquiries, we have learned that many analysts have an active interest in aspects of the world of business and nonprofit institutions and the dynamics of organizational life. Most analysts have pursued these consultation interests on their own, often in isolation. Few colleagues may be aware of these interests, and very few support and encourage this work.
The Committee for Corporate and Organizational Consultation was established two and a half years ago with the following mission:
Fostering and promoting the understanding and development of psychoanalytic consultation to business, community, and organizations.
Promoting the application of psychoanalytic theory to the understanding and experience of working with organizations.
Supporting, promoting, and legitimizing the identity of psychoanalysts among us who are doing this type of work.
Creating forums through workshops and discussion groups where we can meet and discuss both our own experiences in becoming consultants and the actual consultation work we are doing.
Assessing and creating resources for institutes and societies; connecting members interested in working with organizations.
Serving as a resource for learning through sponsoring, supporting, and promoting seminars, discussion groups, and community outreach programs at local societies and institutes.
Members of our group span a diverse range of interests and experience. Some have had extensive organizational immersion and are actively involved in organizational consultation work. Others have no experience in the work world but present a strong interest in organizational dynamics. Some have worked in the organizational world and come to clinical work as a second career, while others have attended or are currently attending business school or have received other management training. Still others have spouses in the corporate world, or have observed the organizational world at close hand through family and friends. Some of us manage organizations, and others have had their interest whetted through clinical experience with people in the throes of career transition or work conflicts.
One of our first challenges as a committee was to survey member institutes to find out which members are engaged in organizational consultation and which institutes and societies are involved in studying organizations and leadership. While several groups have tried to expand the profile of psychoanalysis by offering programs to the business community, very few have offered seminars and discussion groups for members and trainees. There are a number of psychoanalysts consulting formally and informally to businesses and community organizations, usually outside their psychoanalytic clinician roles and often beyond the awareness of their local analytic community.
We find, however, that there is a wide interest among clinicians in applying their knowledge and experience to organizations. The challenge has been to find ways first to learn more about the unique problems of the business world and then to learn about the process of consulting and establishing credibility and marketing oneself to business people.
Our first workshop, at the spring meeting in Washington in May 1999, focused on the transition to a psychoanalytic identity. There is sufficient conflict among analysts wearing different hats — one as a “neutral” psychoanalytic clinician and one as an “influential” organizational consultant — that the transition to part-time consultant is often problematic. Members struggle to create an acceptable identity in a traditional analytic setting when doing work with corporations and institutions where exerting “influence” and “coercion” might be viewed as antithetical to a neutral analytic stance.
We also found it challenging to gain sufficient experience to present ourselves as credible experts to the organizational world. Understanding the unique culture and conflicts in organizations takes training and experience. Speaking the language of the business world and being sensitive to the anxieties of people fearful of being “shrunk” or unmasked involves a transition in how we understand and talk to people at work.
Our second workshop, in New York City in December 1999, focused on creating an organizational consultation practice and transforming a contact into an active consultation. It is exciting to observe the success we have had in gaining credibility among organizational clients and in making valuable contributions through our work.
Kenneth M. Settel, M.D., is co-chair of the Ad Hoc Committee for Corporate and Organizational Consultation. He is on the faculty of PINE, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and principal of Spectrum OED, an organizational consulting firm in Brookline, Mass.
Analysts have been involved with diverse business entities. Consulting to family businesses has been a natural transition for those of us experienced in the unconscious dynamics of family conflict. We work with law firms and other professional partnerships around conflicts inherent in these professional associations. A number of us coach managers and executives who have risen to positions that require understanding of unconscious processes in working with subordinates and supervisors. Consulting to academic departments and facilitating dialogue among employees of nonprofit service groups is another successful area of our work. This consulting may be enhanced by direct personal experience working in a nonprofit. The problems and conflicts inherent in psychoanalytic groups is another area of interest and consultation work. Some of these consultational relationships have continued over time and have raised the question of what is different about consultation and therapy.
Some of us have created consultation groups, while others are working alone. We have marketed ourselves most successfully through personal contacts with psychoanalyst colleagues and friends in the business world. We have also received direct referrals from successful consultation clients. Others are exploring more general promotional efforts and marketing, as is common in the organizational world.
We are encouraged by the enthusiasm of those of us who are making the transition from individual treatment to coaching and consulting. Our analytic understanding makes us more alert than non-analytic consultants to the forces of resistance, conscious and unconscious affects such as anxiety and aggression, and the forces of narcissism as they play themselves out in the organizational world. This perspective has allowed us to succeed in reaching those who might be otherwise unreachable by traditional “organizational development” consultation.
We plan workshops in May 2000 in Chicago and in December 2000 in New York. The May workshop topic is “What is psychoanalytic about ‘psychoanalytically informed’ consultation work, and how does it differ from psychotherapy?” Once again we hope to share our consultation process work, look at what goes on in the actual consultation, and offer support to each other in continuing to promote and expand our endeavors. The workshops are open to all members of the American.
The Committee for Corporate and Organizational Consultation is currently establishing resources, such as bibliographies and curricula, to make available to institutes and societies interested in pursuing study groups, seminars, and outreach programs. We would like to create liaisons with each society and institute to promote and to encourage organizational study. We will also be available to help those interested in pursuing consultation work.
We hope to promote psychoanalytically informed consultation through our writing and teaching, and perhaps through public information panels, symposia, Web site articles, and other promotion. Keeping other clinicians aware of our interests and experiences can lead to referrals and can encourage those in the organizational world to see the value of consultation from those schooled in the unconscious and psychoanalytic process.