On the surface, people go to work and come home again. They sometimes manage people while most are managed themselves. But beneath the function and structures of the work itself, a whole range of emotions affects the success of the relationship between employee and manager and ultimately the organisation they both belong to. Psychodynamic Organisational Theory: Key Concepts and Cases provides a comprehensive but accessible introduction to this fascinating field of study. Featuring case vignettes which bring the various concepts to life, the book is divided into four parts. Part I looks at how the individual relates to the organisation and the unconscious energies they bring, while Part II examines group dynamics and how they affect productivity, including a chapter on meetings. Part III explores the realm of leadership and what roles a manager can play in managing their staff, while Part IV introduces the idea of personality and describes how the manager’s personality influences management dynamics as well as the wider organisational culture. Central to the book, as well as the idea that organisational phenomena are often unconscious, is the understanding that relationships are always reciprocal. Through complex psychological dynamics manager and employee influence and change each other during the process of managing and being managed. This text will be essential reading for students and scholars of leadership, HRM, and organizational psychology, as well as consultants and managers looking for practical insights into how human relationships affect the success of every organisation.

This book provides an introduction to systems psychodynamic theory and its application to organisational consultancy, research and training, outlining systems dynamics methods and their historical and theoretical developments. Systems Psychodynamics is an emerging field of social science, the boundaries of which are continually being refined and re-defined. The ‘systems’ designation refers to open systems concepts that provide the framing perspective for understanding the structural aspects of organisational systems. These include its design, division of labour, levels of authority, and reporting relationships; the nature of work tasks, processes and activities; its mission and primary task; and the nature and patterning of the organisation’s task and sentient boundaries and the transactions across them. This book presents a critical appraisal of the systems psychodynamics paradigm and its application to present-day social and organisational difficulties, showing how a holistic approach to organisational and social problems can offer a fresh perspective on difficult issues. Bringing together the theory and practice of systems psychodynamics for the first time, this book provides an examination of the systems psychodynamics paradigm in action. This book gives an accessible and thorough guide to understanding and using systems psychodynamic ideas for analysts, managers, policy makers, consultants and researchers in a wide range of professional and clinical settings.

This engaging and accessible textbook introduces psychodynamic theory in a way that helps readers better understand complex theories and how these can enrich their practice. Five chapters on classic theorists explore their life stories and the ideas, and are illustrated with captivating case studies. Contemporary developments relating to psychodynamic theory are explored, such as the links with neurobiology and how attachment shapes a baby's brain, and how to make sense of the anxieties contained in the organisations of hospitals and day care nurseries. It also examines psychodynamic evidence based theory and practice An insightful introduction to core psychodynamic theory, this refreshingly clear book is invaluable reading for all students, trainees and practitioners in counselling and psychotherapy, and of interest to those studying and working in the fields of nursing, social work and counselling psychology.

In Psychodynamic Coaching: Distinctive Features, Claudia Nagel presents a comprehensive overview of the unique features of psychodynamic coaching. As leaders and managers acknowledge the need to understand themselves and their context by looking underneath the surface to improve their decision-making, psychodynamic approaches offer unique insight. Psychodynamic Coaching: Distinctive Features covers not only the major theory but also the practice of coaching, giving guidance from beginning to end of the client relationship. Constructive, holistic and accessible, it demonstrates the impact and dynamics of the unconscious whilst illustrating the power of understanding human behaviour in the complexity of the modern world. With a focus on emotions and relationships in supporting modern leaders adapting to organsational challenges, this book will be an invaluable tool for coaches of all backgrounds, academics and students of coaching and organisational behaviour, and also clinicians. It will also be a key resource for senior leaders for their own personal growth.

This authoritative source book on the learning and creative application of the systems psychodynamic perspective defines the field, presenting the key concepts, models, and social methodologies that derive from it, together with their theoretical and conceptual underpinnings in psychoanalysis, group relations and open systems theory.

Developing Organisational Consultancy provides consultants with theoretical and practical advice on how to handle typical consultancy challenges. Well-established organisational consultants from the UK and the USA offer descriptions of problems they have encountered in their work, theoretical and practical approaches that they have found helpful, cases from their actual practice, and advice about how to apply their suggested approach generally. Chapters are grouped together to address three key areas of interest to consultants: * evolving a professional stance * considering psychodynamic approaches * applying organisational theory. For both experienced and newly-practising organiszational and management consultants, this book is a valuable source of reference and the key to developing a more aware and successful practice.

This highly innovative new book reconsiders the structure of basic emotions, the self and the mind. It clinically covers mental disorders, therapeutic interventions, defense mechanisms, consciousness and personality and results in a comprehensive discussion of human responses to the environmental crisis. For openers, a novel psychodynamic model of happiness, sadness, fear and anger is presented that captures their object relational features. It offers a look through the eyes of these specific emotions and delineates how they influence the interaction with other persons. As regulation of the emotional state is the core task of the self, dysregulation can lead to mental disorders. Clinical cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression are discussed, using the model to outline the emotional turbulence underneath. Finally, the elaborated theory is used to analyse personal responses to the environmental crisis and political strategies that capitalise on them. This book will appeal to scholars, psychotherapists and psychiatrists with an interest in emotions and who wish to challenge their own implicit theory of emotion with an explicit new model. It will also be of interest for academic researchers and professionals in fields where emotional processes play a pivotal role.

Understanding experience at work, especially in toxic organizations, is a multidimensional undertaking that must include all senses. The use of applied poetry has its primary value as an evocative approach to sensing, knowing, and understanding workplace experience. Poetry at its best condenses into relatively few words, metaphors, and images what conventional social science narratives would take much longer to articulate. Where poetry often hints and alludes, narrative seeks to spell out, expound, and complete. Where poetry leaves much mental space for the listener or reader to fill in with one’s imagination, narrative fills in the spaces with rich detail. Applied poetry and its contextual stories offer a way of accessing workplace experience that is unique and valuable in terms of understanding lives at work. The use of complementary psychodynamic theories, like all theories, is a way of trying to account for what we have found and experienced and in particular why it happened. "Why," the authors suggest, is critical in terms of understanding the sensing, images, and metaphors evoked by the poetry and stories that may resonate with hearers and readers for reasons that are unconscious and are rooted in the past. These transferences that come forward from life experience into the present are the critical data we work with. These are the data of psychoanalysis. This book both widens and deepens the scope of organizational research offered by other researchers, theorists, and approaches to understanding, interpreting, explaining, leading, and consulting with workplace organizations. Its triangulating integration of applied poetry, experience and stories behind the poetry, and the three psychoanalytic models of explaining life in workplaces, is a new and distinct contribution to organizational research, leadership, and consulting efforts to help organization members solve real, underlying problems and not offer simplistic, formulaic solutions based solely on a study of the organization’s surface. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of organizational studies, leadership, and management.

In this revealing study, Larry Hirschhorn examines the rituals, or social defenses, organizations develop to cope with change. Using extended ease studies from offices, factories, and social services, he describes why these often irrational practices that fragment and injure individuals within the workplace exist, how they operate, and how they can be reshaped to enhance people's work experience.

This fascinating book shows how an understanding of the psychodynamics of the extended family, from parental relations to sibling rivalries, can provide insight into many of the key issues faced by organizations today. Covering topics such as change management, creativity, autonomous groups, leadership and democracy, it shows how deep-rooted family dynamics unconsciously frame the way we relate to each other in the workplace, and how they can have a profound influence on the broader trajectory of organizations. This book features: Examples on how to use the extended family as a framework for understanding organizational behaviour. A look beyond parental relationships to discuss sibling relationships as well. Examples to illustrate key topics of practical relevance to consultants and managers. Family Psychodynamics in Organizational Contexts is an important read for students and scholars of organizational psychology, organizational studies and psychodynamics, as well as consultants and coaches working in organizational contexts.