Howard S. Schwartz

What Can Psychoanalysis Offer Organization Studies Today? Taking Stock of Current Developments and Thinking about Future Directions:

The introductory paper to the Special Issue discusses psychoanalytic contributions to the study of contemporary organizations. The aim is to draw attention to psychoanalysis as a critical theory with wide explanatory power and a potential for thinking about organizational practice in new ways. It does so firstly, by reviewing the impact it had so far on illuminating group dynamics, leadership dysfunctions and the sanctioned socially institutional defences. Secondly, it contests the limited impact of psychoanalysis on mainstream organization and management theory as an unfortunate outcome since it represents arguably the most advanced and compelling conception of human subjectivity that any theoretical approach has to offer. By way of example, seven papers comprising this Special Issue are introduced. Lastly the paper outlines future developments in the psychoanalytic studies of organizations that might be about: (i) greater conceptual inclusivity and crossing the boundaries between the humanities and science; (ii) the study of affect and emotion in organizations (iii) an integration of psychoanalytical insights with social theory via psychosocial approaches and ‘systems psychoanalysis’ and (iv) linking psychoanalysis to discourses of power and the politics of life.

NARCISSISM PROJECT AND CORPORATE DECAY: THE CASE OF GENERAL MOTORS

When I left graduate school and began teaching organizational behavior courses, I was struck by the irrelevance of what I had learned to the actual organizational experience of my students. My students experienced and understood organizational life as a kind of “vanity fair,” in which individuals who were interested in “getting ahead” could do so by playing to the vanity of their superiors. One needed to do this in two respects. One needed to flatter the superior as an individual and as an occupant of the superior role. This latter process tended to trail off into an adulation of the organization in general.

Organizational disaster and organizational decay: the case of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Organizational decay is a condition of generalized and systemic ineffective- ness. It develops when an organization shifts its activities from coping with reality to presenting a dramatization of its own ideal character. In the decadent organization, flawed decision making of the sort that leads to disaster is normal activity, not an aberration. Three aspects of the development of organizational decay are illustrated in the case of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They are (1) the institutionalization of the fiction, (2) per sonnel changes in parallel with the institutionalization of the fiction, and (3) the narcissistic loss of reality among management.

The Sin of the Father: Reflections on the Roles of the Corporation Man, the Suburban Housewife, Their Son, and Their Daughter in the Deconstruction of the Patriarch

The roots of the postmodernist denigration of the patriarch are traced to the postwar middle class family. The premise of this family was that the father would work and make possible a sphere of family life in which maternal influences, based on a primordial image of the mother, could operate without constraint. But identification with the primordial mother was psychologically insupportable for the mother, who blamed the father and enlisted the son in her antagonism. This deprived the son of the possibility of forming a superego and resulted in his aliention. The daughter raised the antagonism to the level of social program and carried it forward.

Masculinity and the Meaning of Work: A Response to Manichean Feminism

Mens attitude toward women is deeply ambivalent. Women are the centers of mens emotional lives, but men are deeply afraid of them. The meaning of male work arises from this ambivalence. It represents an attempt to engage and transform reality in order to gain connection with the female without becoming completely dependent on her. Manichean feminism is a form of feminism that sees gender differentiation as an opposition of the forces of goodness, identified with the female, against the forces of badness, identified with the male. It is based on the premise that reality can be denied, and represents the repudiation of males who engage it.

Maslow and the Hierarchical Enactment of Organizational Reality

The present paper reinterprets Maslows hierarchy in a way that is consistent with Maslows own characterizations of his hierarchy as (a) psychodynamic, (b) psychoanalytic, and (c) a hierarchy of character types. It is demonstrated that the resulting hierarchy represents the differential construction, or enactment, of social and organizational reality. The orientations toward work and work organizations of persons at each stage are derived.

Organizations, from Concepts to Constructs: Psychoanalytic Theories of Character and the Meaning of Organization

AbstractThe authors argue that difficulties in defining organizations arise from the fact that organization is not a concept, but a cognitive, emotional and symbolic construct. The way different individuals experience organizations depends on their psychological character, a product of their psychological development. The paper develops a psychoanalytic approach which links individual character with experiences of organizations; it is argued that some individuals experience organizations as groups, others as theatres for heroic exploits, yet others as political arenas for deals and compromises. Essentially, different psychological characters construct organizations to accord with their predominant psychological desires, casting themselves as central characters within wish-fulfilling fantasies of what organizations may be. At the end of the article, it is suggested that even academic traditions of organizations may express different stages of character development. Organizations then are not so much approa...

Psychodynamics of Political Correctness

Political correctness represents a regression in university functioning in which paternal influences are repudiated and a biparental model of authority is replaced by one revolving around a primordial conception of the mother. Paternal influences are those that represent the engagement with external reality, and regression to the primordial mother is therefore a rejection of external reality. Aspects of university functioning that are explained by this model include the inversion of valuation, the assault against white males, the subordination of rationality in decision making, the balkanization of the university, the drive to the extreme, and the anomaly of female power.

Political Correctness and Organizational Nihilism

Political correctness represents the attempt to eliminate the father, often referred to as the patriarch, who is seen as having deprived us of our connection to mother and all of her goodness. But what has really deprived us of our connection to mother’s goodness is not the father, but reality itself. Political correctness therefore represents an attempt to destroy reality. This attempt to destroy the father as the representation of reality represents a different way of constructing meaning than we have in the traditional Oedipal arrangement. But the traditional arrangement made organization possible, whereas anti-paternal psychology undertakes to destroy organization. When organizations give themselves to political correctness they therefore reorganize themselves toward self-destruction. I call that process organizational nihilism.

Organization and meaning: A multilevel psychoanalytic treatment of the jayson blair scandal at the new york times

Cross-level analysis is a problem for mainstream approaches to organizational behavior, but not for psychoanalytic theory. The reason is that psychoanalytic theory is not so much about behavior as about the meaning of behavior, which is relatively invariant across levels. The Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times is analyzed at the individual, the group, the intrapsychic, the interpersonal, and the organizational levels. Blair’s behavior and the behavior of the Times toward him are explained in terms of a clash between two ways in which meaning is made: the Oedipal and the anti-oedipal.