Gianpiero Petriglieri

Transcending Polarization: Beyond Binary Thinking

Human life is an emotional roller coaster, and when confronting emotionally charged events, individuals, groups, and larger collectivities instinctively frame their predicaments in a binary way–as a polarity encompassing a dimension of choice with two mutually exclusive alternatives. Events are thus construed as dilemmas to be resolved in favor of one alternative or the other. However, the inherent tension leading to polarization conceals an important developmental opportunity, if we “hold” the tension long enough to permit exploration, differentiation, and resolution by a third, “mediating” element. In this article the authors explore the regressive (defensive) and progressive (developmental) functions of the archetypal human propensity to polarize. The neural underpinnings and the psychology of binary thinking are considered followed by an examination of the dialectical patterns found in various schools of psychotherapy and the ways in which they represent attempts to harness the energy of polarization for healing and growth.

The Invisible Revealed: Collusion as an Entry to the Group Unconscious

In group consultation, as in therapy, a shared awareness of projective processes is helpful to both consultant and client. If left unaware, the flow of material can submerge both. The consultant risks colluding with the group by adopting their projections and then either withdrawing or acting out. When such situations are “exposed,” they are usually considered to be either professional embarrassments or evidence of professional incompetence. Yet careful investigation of the experience of collusion can lead to a deeper understanding of the covert and unconscious elements of working with a group.

Fast Tracks and Inner Journeys: Crafting Portable Selves for Contemporary Careers:

Through a longitudinal, qualitative study of 55 managers engaged in mobile careers across organizations, industries, and countries, and pursuing a one-year international master’s of business administration (MBA), we build a process model of the crafting of portable selves in temporary identity workspaces. Our findings reveal that contemporary careers in general, and temporary membership in an institution, fuel people’s efforts to craft portable selves: selves endowed with definitions, motives, and abilities that can be deployed across roles and organizations over time. Two pathways for crafting a portable self—one adaptive, the other exploratory—emerged from the interaction of individuals’ aims and concerns with institutional resources and demands. Each pathway involved developing a coherent understanding of the self in relation to others and to the institution that anchored participants to their current organization while preparing them for future ones. The study shows how institutions that host members temporarily can help them craft selves that afford a sense of agentic direction and enduring connection, tempering anxieties and bolstering hopes associated with mobile working lives. It also suggests that institutions serving as identity workspaces for portable selves may remain attractive and extend their cultural influence in an age of workforce mobility.

Stuck in a Moment: A Developmental Perspective on Impasses

Transactional analysis often regards the experience of “feeling stuck” as the manifestation of an impasse, an intrapsychic conflict and/or interpersonal roadblock. This paper provides a developmental perspective on impasses. It examines the relationship between the individual experience of stuckness and the contemporary social context, and it discusses whether and how such experiences might present opportunities for developing new capacities and meanings of the self.

Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities:

Building on an inductive, qualitative study of independent workers—people not affiliated with an organization or established profession—this paper develops a theory about the management of precarious and personalized work identities. We find that in the absence of organizational or professional membership, workers experience stark emotional tensions encompassing both the anxiety and fulfillment of working in precarious and personal conditions. Lacking the holding environment provided by an organization, the workers we studied endeavored to create one for themselves through cultivating connections to routines, places, people, and a broader purpose. These personal holding environments helped them manage the broad range of emotions stirred up by their precarious working lives and focus on producing work that let them define, express, and develop their selves. Thus holding environments transformed workers’ precariousness into a tolerable and even generative predicament. By clarifying the process through which people manage emotions associated with precarious and personalized work identities, and thereby render their work identities viable and their selves vital, this paper advances theorizing on the emotional underpinnings of identity work and the systems psychodynamics of independent work.

In Praise of Loving "Betrayal": Reflections on the Steiner-Novellino Letters and the Life of Behavioral Science Organizations

As a reviewer for the Transactional Analysis Journal (TAJ), in October 2004 the author read the Steiner-Novellino correspondence, which was being considered for publication in the April 2005 theme issue on “Transactional Analysis and Psychoanalysis.” In this article, he uses his unfolding feelings and thoughts on reading it–in his roles as TAJ reviewer and as a member and officer of the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA)–as a starting point for reflecting on the relationship between tradition and innovation, integrity, betrayal, and the vitality, or lack thereof, of behavioral science organizations.