ORGANIZATION IN THE MIND Tavistock Clinic Series Margot Waddell (Series Editor) Published and distributed by Karnac Books Other titles in the Tavistock Clinic Series Acquainted with the Night: Psychoanalysis and the Poetic Imagination Hamish Canham and Carole Satyamurti (editors) Assessment in Child Psychotherapy Margaret Rustin and Emanuela Quagliata (editors) Facing It Out: Clinical Perspectives on Adolescent Disturbance Robin Anderson and Anna Dartington (editors) Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality Margot Waddell Internal Landscapes and Foreign Bodies: Eating Disorders and Other Pathologies Gianna Williams Mirror to Nature: Drama, Psychoanalysis, and Society Margaret Rustin and Michael Rustin Multiple Voices: Narrative in Systemic Family Psychotherapy Renos K. Papadopoulos and John Byng-Hall (editors) Oedipus and the Couple Francis Grier (editor) Psychoanalysis and Culture: A Kleinian Perspective David Bell (editor) Psychotic States in Children Margaret Rustin, Maria Rhode, Alex Dubinsky, Hélène Dubinsky (editors) Reason and Passion: A Celebration of the Work of Hanna Segal David Bell (editor) Sent Before My Time: A Child Psychotherapist’s View of Life on a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Margaret Cohen Surviving Space: Papers on Infant Observation Andrew Briggs (editor) The Many Faces of Asperger’s Syndrome Maria Rhode and Trudy Klauber (editors) Therapeutic Care for Refugees: No Place Like Home Renos K. Papadopoulos (editor) Understanding Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Approach Caroline Garland (editor) Unexpected Gains: Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities David Simpson and Lynda Miller (editors) Working Below the Surface: The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organizations Clare Huffington, David Armstrong, William Halton, Linda Hoyle and Jane Pooley (editors) Orders Tel: +44 (0)20 8969 4454; Fax: +44 (0)20 8969 5585 Email: [email protected] www.karnacbooks.com ORGANIZATION IN THE MIND Psychoanalysis, Group Relations, and Organizational Consultancy OCCASIONAL PAPERS 1989–2003 David Armstrong Edited by Robert French Foreword by Anton Obholzer KARNAC KARNAC LONDON NEWYORK For my colleagues at TCS CONTENTS SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi EDITOR’S NOTE xiii FOREWORD Anton Obholzer xv CHAPTER ONE Organization in the mind: an introduction 1 CHAPTER TWO Names, thoughts, and lies: the relevance of Bion’s later writing for understanding experiences in groups 10 CHAPTER THREE The “organization-in-the-mind”: reflections on the relation of psychoanalysis to work with institutions 29 vii viii CONTENTS CHAPTER FOUR The analytic object in organizational work 44 CHAPTER FIVE The recovery of meaning 55 CHAPTER SIX “Psychic retreats”: the organizational relevance of a psychoanalytic formulation 69 CHAPTER SEVEN Emotions in organizations: disturbance or intelligence? 90 CHAPTER EIGHT Keeping on moving 111 CHAPTER NINE Making present: reflections on a neglected function of leadership and its contemporary relevance 124 CHAPTER TEN The work group revisited: reflections on the practice and relevance of group relations 139 REFERENCES 151 INDEX 159 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE This volume traces David Armstrong’s enduring preoccupa- tions over the last fifteen years. These preoccupations began even earlier, in the author’s work at the Tavistock Institute in the early 1960s. They were sustained during sixteen or so years at The Grubb Institute and came to be re-worked since taking up an appointment in 1994 with the newly formed Tavistock Consultancy Service. The book is thus rooted in what is now generally known as the “Tavistock approach” or the “Tavistock tradition”. And yet the focus is very distinctive. It is not so much centred on the interweav- ing of the different frames of reference to be found in the varied settings of the work—those of psychoanalysis, of group relations, and of consultancy. The emphasis is, rather, on the deepening and elaborating of the description of phenomena that the author en- countered in the course of this work, phenomena that found col- lective expression in the term “organization-in-the-mind”. The originality of the thinking behind this term characterizes this series of brilliant and accessible papers, each bearing on different aspects of the author’s subtle and steady efforts to inform the practice of organizational consultancy with, as he says in chapter one, “the ix