EscherIstituzioni

From the organization-in-the-mind to the organization as subject: conceptual maps for psychoanalytic consultancy in institutions

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Abstract

Organizational consultancy has been using methods and approaches of psychoanalytic origin for several decades now, especially when the problems involved seem to imply significant emotional and inter-personal aspects, that leaders, key figures and often the involved subjects themselves appear mostly unaware of or visibly unwilling to know.
A considerable amount of literature is now available so that those who are interested in this subject can study it in further depth in its various aspects and its multiple applications. The aim of this article is rather an attempt to better specify the “object” of these professional practises, providing some conceptual maps and tools for guidance that can help consultants (but managers as well) from an analytical or psychotherapeutic background not to get lost in a mare magnum of theories and techniques where a number of specific risks are present alongside questionable improvisations and  methodologies for every season. I am not referring so much to the various possible forms of narcissistic seduction or omnipotent vocations which can drag a consultant into disaster or into perverse collusion with a client, but rather to the danger of losing sight of the object of one’s own work, simplifying its complex nature, dealing more with the people than the processes (or vice versa), reifying the organization or anthropomorphizing it, losing the capacity to distinguish between fantasy and concrete reality; all this is a setting which  the consultant Read more

FunzioneSalute

The role of psychoanalysis in the welfare state crisis: from taking care of the patient to taking care of the healthcare institutions

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Abstract

Recent developments in psychoanalytic outreach researches have offered ever more convincing evidences of a circular, mutual relationship between the internal world, the group and the external society. From such point of view, the author explores the current crisis scenarios of the welfare and the parallel crisis of credibility and market of the psychoanalytic therapy. He suggests that in the future psychoanalysis could shift its focus from individual treatment  to the study of group and institution,  to the point of recasting itself as a “clinical approach to organizations” to improve efficiency, awareness and well-being in the workplaces. To make it happen, it is necessary for psychoanalysis to overcome the mistrust for interdisciplinary dialogue with other approaches, methods and disciplines, and the discomfort Read more

MagritteContenitore

Therapeutic groups and the institutional container: curative factors of the psychiatric institutional field and its destructive elements

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Abstract

Starting from increasing destructiveness of symbolization processes in contemporary psychopathology, this paper try to suggest connections between institutional containers , subjective mind and group (mostly bionian one), allowing everyone a way to  keep available oniric elements for the care Read more

MagritteContenitore

On the concept of “institutional container: an introduction

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The subject of this monographic issue was inspired by an hypothesis which the three authors of one of its papers had shared from their own work: that the real object of the so-called “supervisions” within healthcare and social institutions is not so much the clinical case, or the quality of the provided service, or the staff support, but rather the institutional container. In my view this discourse could apply to all social organisations, even those from the private and commercial sector, where other methods – such as organisational consultancy, executive coaching etc. – might be assimilated to supervision as a way to “take care of the container”.
The concept of an “institutional container” is not a new one, even though from a quick survey of the literature it seems that it did not undergo a deep inquiry, except in sociological studies and in  applications to groups. Furthermore, when mentioned it is generally conceived as a “thing” or a frame, with relatively little attention to its functions and particularly to its relationship with the “content”. Paraphrasing Winnicott[1], I would suggest that there is not such a thing as a “container”, separated from a linkage to the content. In the meaning used in the following articles this concept is seen more as a dynamic process than a structure, and its origins go back to Bion’s studies on the mind’s function of containing emotions in early relationships and in the development of thought; other contributions from the psychoanalytic field are the concepts of “holding” (Winnicott, 1965), “deposit” and “encuadre” (Pichon-Rivière, 1960; Bleger, 1967), “institution as a defence” (Jaques, 1955; Menzies, 1961), and “institution-in-the-mind” (Armstrong, 1997).
The psychological function of containment and the related model of container/contained relationship (♀↔♂) are explored in the following articles starting from Bion’s insights in Learning from Experience (Bion, 1962), where he traces the containment process back to the early relationships between the mother and the infant. As Obholzer suggests (1996), these relationships imply processes of projective and introjective identification, which in favourable conditions promote for the infant the experience of being “contained” by the mother, helping the creation of his/her inner world and the development of the capacity for thinking. The Bion (1962) concept of container and contained are crucial at this stage of development…. The baby experiences a state of distress or ill-being while not being clear what the problem is – merely the fact that there is a problem. The mother recognizes that the baby has a problem Read more