The Contribution of Psychoanalysis to Organization Studies and Management: An Overview

Introduction

That the unconscious and its interpretation are not confined to the domain of psychopathology alone but concern all the sciences dealing with the genesis of human civilization and its great institutions such as art, religion and social order, was pointed out by Freud as early as 1910 in his ‘Observations on Wild Psychoanalysis’ (Freud, 1910 [1971]). It was not until ‘The Claims of Psychoanalysis to Scientific Interest’ (Freud, 1913 [1955]), however, that he truly characterized psychoanalysis as a distinct body of knowledge in its own right that could be linked to other forms of knowledge. Tracing the developments that his invention could lead to in not only the life sciences, but also – and above all – the social sciences, Freud was to stress how very many domains of knowledge psychoanalysis is of interest to, with psychology, linguistics, philosophy, biology, history, aesthetics, sociology and education all being listed as examples. In Freud’s view – as was even more the case for many of his disciples later on – there was, in fact, a clear scientific imperative to extract psychoanalysis from the strictly analytic domain insofar as it has something to say not only about symptoms but also about the normal functioning of the human psyche and, beyond this, culture (Gabriel, 1983; Smelser, 1998).

Given Freud’s emphasis on psychoanalysis’ applicability to the social sciences, there seems little doubt that he would have extended analytic pertinence to organization and management sciences had these been institutionally recognized at the time he was writing. Certainly, there were already links between Freudianism and business circles in the 1920s and 1930s. It was not, however, until the post-war period and the inaugural studies of Jaques (1951, 1955) at the Tavistock Institute in London, followed by those, in a very different vein, of Levinson (1955, 1962) and Zaleznik (1966) in the United States, that the interest of applying psychoanalysis to the corporate sphere would be confirmed and give rise to a prolific and multifaceted current of research focusing on the psychodynamics of work, leadership and organizations. This global title, like that of organizational psychoanalysis or socio-analysis, does not mean a unified field (since the approaches are numerous and varied), nor a static one (given that conceptual or methodological changes, and sometimes even about-turns, can be seen, as with Jaques’ repudiation of his initial work at the end of the 1980s). Nevertheless, whatever the differences between these psychoanalytically informed scholars and practitioners, they have all striven over the last 60 years to link psychic phenomena, organizational dynamics and action contexts in a way that avoids what they consider to be the conceptual and phenomenological reduction inherent to neo-behaviourist approaches. The extraordinary richness of this current remains, moreover, in full evidence today (Arnaud, 2004; Long, 2006; Sievers & Ahlers-Niemann, 2007), such that there is now a need to undertake a critical exploration of the field, including its main seminal works. This is precisely the aim of the present overview, from both a systematic and historical perspective.

That psychoanalysis can make an epistemological contribution to the study of organizations and the development of management theory is clear (Hirschhorn & Neumann, 1999; Gabriel & Carr, 2002). There are, though, certain aspects of psychoanalytic theory that limit or weaken the value of this contribution (Anderson & White, 2003). First, the psychoanalytic approach is difficult to assimilate within the theoretical and methodological framework of organization and management research due to the specificity of Freud’s concept of the unconscious, according to which an individual never really knows what he says or does (Halton, 1994). Second, it is necessary to rework analytical concepts and not merely directly apply them to the functioning of organizations in order to avoid truncated representations and abusive, if not simply false, interpretations, which tend to put a psychological spin on organizational problems (Lawrence, 2000). Finally, the psychoanalytic ethic preaches neutrality regarding the ’other’s’ options and a refusal to exert the slightest pressure on or authority over him. As such, in terms of its adaptation to reality (e.g. market requirements) or the exercise of (especially managerial) power, the use of psychoanalysis poses a number of problems (Wozniak, 2010).

For my part, while being only too aware of the potential difficulties inherent in the particularities of the psychoanalytic approach, I would like to adopt a resolutely heuristic perspective in an attempt to highlight the theoretical, methodological and practical interest of psychoanalysis for organization and management studies.

The relevance of integrating psychoanalytic approaches is, as I shall go on to show, threefold. First, it increases the explanatory power of organization and management studies with regard to one of the dimensions most resistant to scientific investigation, namely, the unconscious processes of organizational life. The latter constitute an obscure dimension of organizations and management situations that impacts visible performance and is expressed through problems such as inappropriate behaviour or repetitive failures. Second, in order to identify and explore these hidden phenomena, psychoanalysis proposes methodological principles that, by giving pride of place to actors’ subjectivity and by shedding light on the transferential dimension of research work, enable organization and management researchers to better manage their relation to the objects of their study. Third, the use of psychoanalysis in organization and management sciences not only seeks to develop abstract knowledge but also poses questions about acting in organizational contexts. Organizational psychoanalysis, therefore, provides a framework for reflection while also functioning as an interface between organizations conceived as an object of knowledge, on the one hand, and as an art of action implemented by concrete individuals, on the other.

New Conceptual Tools for Understanding the Complexity of Organizations and Management Situations

The contribution of psychoanalysis to organization and management sciences first consists, then, in increasing the latter’s explanatory power (Gabriel, 1999). This is combined with an effect of discovery and innovation in a field that, while traditionally not very receptive to questions of a psychoanalytic nature, now sorely needs to open itself up to innovative forms of thought (Contu, Driver & Jones, 2010). The psychoanalytic approach can be considered to complement the standard models used in the organization and management field (Armstrong, Balzagette & Hutton, 1994) insofar as it deals with processes that are imperative to study if one wants to grasp the whole set of factors capable of contributing to organizational performance (Kets de Vries, 1991).

While every application of social sciences to professional realities encompasses a promise of increased intelligibility, this involves, in psychoanalysis’ case, a specific dimension that is elided by the knowledge provided by research considered as normal in Kuhn’s sense of the word: namely, unconscious, intrapsychic and intersubjective processes and their influence on organizational life (Carr & Zanetti, 1999; Hirschhorn, 1990; Krantz, 1989). Furthermore, psychoanalysis considers this invisible dimension to be just as worthy of interest, and a source of material effects at least as significant, as organizations’ visible reality (Brown, 1997; Huffington, Armstrong, Halton, Hoyle & Pooley, 2004). For example, psychoanalysis has alone dealt with the importance of maintaining illusion and the effects of organizational pathology that arise from this (Schwartz, 1990). Taking the unconscious into account (via psychoanalytic concepts such as the imaginary, repression, defence mechanisms or narcissism) therefore allows one to have far more in-depth insights than does the simple recourse to the notion of informal systems (Brown & Starkey, 2000).

We should note that a lack of knowledge, or even awareness, of this hidden dimension proves to be epistemologically harmful not only because it prevents in-depth understanding of the psychic dynamic of organizations, especially from the perspective of their management (Hirschhorn, 1997; Gabriel, 1997; Miller, 1993; Oglensky, 1995; Stein, 2005) but also because organization and management researchers tend to compensate for their psychoanalytic ignorance by relying upon implicit psychological theories or even common sense. Lacking scientific rigour, such theories usually end up obscuring both the singularity of the human subject and the complexity of the group or organization this subject participates within (Gold, 2004; Levinson, 1987).

By contrast, the psychoanalytic approach – regardless of whether it is informed by a Freudian, Kleinian or Lacanian metapsychology, or by self psychology, ego psychology and so on (Kernberg, 1993) – sets out to study the unconscious in all its forms and can, therefore, be legitimately applied to organizations, understood as systems that are constructed, lived and managed by individuals, each of whom has specific capacities and a specific unconscious (Amado, 1995).

In this perspective, psychoanalysis should not be considered as a panacea for organization and management research (Nobus & Quinn, 2005) but rather as ‘one of many valid theoretical perspectives in the field’ (Wozniak, 2010, p. 407). Researchers are, thereby, able to bring to light not some form of hypothetical true meaning of the organizations they study but another type of meaning (Diamond, 1993; Obholzer, 1994), which will be characterized as affective, imaginary or symbolic according to the case at hand and theoretical references (Contu & Willmott, 2006; Fotaki, 2006; Gabriel, 1991; Roberts, 2005; Vidaillet, 2007). This other sort of meaning is, in principle, just as valid as sociological, economic, or cultural signification centred on cognitive and rationalized aspects of human behaviour (Gould, Stapley & Stein, 2001). By its means, researchers can, for example, avoid interpreting as human weakness what appears to be inefficiency but which may in fact be a different form of rational behaviour (Menzies, 1991).

Behaviour such as repetitive failures in the implementation of apparently simple policy decisions, irrational resistance to change, or the incapacity to react in a crisis situation, which is usually viewed as a malfunction in the life of organizations, is understood from a psychoanalytic perspective as functioning, in fact, on ‘another scene’ (Freud) that sometimes emerges into view: the scene of the ‘organization-in-the-mind’ (Armstrong, 2005). Under certain circumstances, social groups do not make free use of organizational elements at their disposal (roles, functions, etc.) and are prisoners of a preconceived scenario. Organizational psychoanalysis provides explanatory models on this subject (Gabriel & Carr, 2002; Hirschhorn & Neumann, 1999).

In this way, the psychoanalytic approach brings a new sense to meaning beyond that of cognitive perception popularised by Weick and his successors, which has tended to dominate over the last few years (Mills, Thurlow & Mills, 2010). Such an opening up of meaning – which remains inaccessible to individuals because of the structural division introduced by the unconscious in their relation with themselves – obviously has pertinence for the very terms ‘organization’ and ‘management’, which would seem almost designed to deny and to repress (Gabriel, 1999).

In certain studies, the psychoanalytic approach will thus function as another way of apprehending phenomenal reality, simply enriching traditional interpretative schemes already employed in organizational behaviour (Czander, Jakobsberg, Mersky & Nunberg, 2002), while in other instances, where unconscious mechanisms appear to be pre-eminent in the companies under investigation, psychoanalysis will be able to serve as the organizing principle (Prins, 2006).

The classes of managerial phenomena for which psychoanalysis can serve as a major explanatory tool, as well as the analytical models potentially most pertinent for each of them, can be defined by considering three major vectors of research.

First, some studies may insist upon the use of notions that already have psychoanalytical connotations, such as ‘mourning’ in the case of organizations undergoing transformation (Hirschhorn & Barnett, 1993). This use can also explicitly involve experimentally wresting a term away from its usual context, as is the case of the concept of ‘unmanaged organization’ employed by Gabriel (1995) to designate a kind of organizational ‘dream world’ in which desires, anxieties and emotions prevail. Researchers are also often led to coin terminology comprising both the psychical and organizational aspects of the object under study (Burman, 2004), as Zaleznik (1990) does, for example, with the term ‘organizational neurosis’. They can even try to develop a joint conceptual framework based on propositions that are to be explored via case studies, as Long (1999) does with the idea of social defence against anxiety, which she places alongside organizational discourse on consumerism.

Second, general theoretical constructions borrowed from psychoanalytic theory may be used to deal with particular situations. Kets de Vries and Miller (1984) have accordingly made use of a psychoanalytically-influenced psychopathology to describe certain types of counterproductive (paranoiac, compulsive, depressive, etc.) behaviour shown at the managerial level, while Gabriel and Schwartz (1999) have preferred to draw on the Freudian model of infantile psycho-sexual (oral, anal, phallic, etc.) developmental stages.

Third, other researchers may endeavour to open up new theoretical spaces capable of capturing the complexity of the psycho-affective processes examined. Among studies illustrating this ambitious approach, I would particularly mention those of Gabriel (1993) on organizational nostalgia and Schwartz (1990) on corporate narcissism.

To this I would add that reference to psychoanalysis can also contribute to (re)introducing into the field of organizational and managerial concerns a number of concepts that have been either forgotten or ignored (Gabriel, 2004), such as subjectivity, affectivity, lived experience, the symbolic and historicity, while at the same time bringing some necessary order to the terminological jungle surrounding certain floating psychological signifiers, such as the notion of unconscious motivation (Sievers, 1986). It can also potentially encourage organization and management researchers to address such fundamental questions as those of the nature and constitution of the social bond, the origin of managerial pathologies, the charismatic role of leaders, or life and death in organizations (Carr & Lapp, 2006; Sievers, 1994). As such, critical management studies as a whole stand to benefit from psychoanalysis’ contribution in that this allows the re-examination of what is accepted as obvious (Harding, 2007; Trehan, 2007).

Methodological Lessons for Dealing with the Psychological Dimension of Organization and Management Research

First of all, by means of investigative methods stemming from the analytic set-up for individual treatment and refined in the social field (Berg, 1988; Gabriel, 1999), organization and management researchers are able to explore and isolate psychic phenomena unable to be apprehended by other approaches, such as quantitative techniques of data collection (Gould, 1991). This is especially true for the practice of attentively listening to and interpreting what actors leave unsaid, with the possibility of thus rendering public that which an organization causes to be repressed – for example, the expression of resistance to change (Czander, 1993). The method of free association is particularly useful in this respect since it allows access to repressed contents that owe their status not only to tacit knowledge but also to active ignorance (Parker, 2005). Researchers are then able to more fully describe, in company monographs for example, what they observe by using the model of psychoanalytic psychopathology case studies (Hollway & Jefferson, 2000).

Second, the psychoanalytic approach can aid researchers immersed in an organization to better apprehend the context of their research and more finely analyse their relation to the terrain (Shapiro & Carr, 1991). As a result, they are able to position themselves with full knowledge of the facts as regards, among other things, the type of approach they should adopt and the best way in which to organize their relationships with the actors (Brown, 2006).

Armed with a psychoanalytic approach, organization and management researchers who are intent upon producing contextually based knowledge capable of being controlled by other researchers are, therefore, better equipped to deal with the singularity of each concrete case, in terms of both its history and subjective complexity (Hunt, 1989). This singularity is understood as strictly irreducible even if analytic theory generally maintains that certain rules govern the functioning of the individual, group or organizational imaginary. By letting itself be guided by reality (symptoms, suffering, etc.) rather than seeking to instruct the latter, the psychoanalytic approach can serve as a research model for a ‘grounded theory’ (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Further, the knowledge so produced is aimed at widening and deepening understanding of organizational conduct rather than controlling variables or simple predictability (Polkinghorne, 1988).

Psychoanalysis is additionally of aid to researchers-cum-actors in the field as regards transference (Baum, 1994; Berg & Smith, 1988; Clarke, 2002), understood as a dynamic inter-relational process in which the observer is always being taken for ‘someone else’, as Devereux (1967) has particularly shown in his ethnological investigations. This misunderstanding engenders specific reactions and introduces new stakes into the situation, as can be seen when researchers operating in an organization undergoing problems related to change find themselves serving, at an unconscious level, as a transitional object for some of the staff involved. This is due to the fact that they incarnate and facilitate the transition between the old order and the new, in much the same way as a teat or teddy bear materializes and accompanies an infant’s separation from his mother. Hence the – now comprehensible – difficulty for these actors to let the researcher go (even in the physical sense), as shown by their propensity for seemingly interminable discussions with the latter, long after the end of working hours, or again, their tendency to become dependent on them (Morgan, 1986). Here, Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a particularly pertinent perspective by referring the ‘someone else’ the researcher is taken for to a ‘subject supposed to know’ (Lacan): in other words, the researcher is presumed to be in possession of knowledge and this presupposition forms the framework within which the transference relation crystallizes. In this perspective, it is best to integrate the transference in such a way that its projective effects and imaginary articulations are neutralized and it becomes a form of strategy that those observed can adopt in order to acquire knowledge, supposedly possessed by the observer, about themselves.

Researchers can also analyse their own implication, in terms of counter-transference, as regards both the object of their research and the complex network of relationships in the organization under study (Sullivan, 2002). To this end, it is necessary to set up a system – similar to what takes place in training analyses (Jacobs, 1995) – by which researchers are supervised by someone or a group of people external to the situation, such as colleagues, consultants, psychologists and so on (Czander & Eisold, 2003). As well as allowing counter-transference to be dealt with, such a system allows a certain distance to be established, especially with respect to the myth of pure and affectively-neutral research, which psychoanalysis reveals to be an illusion.

More generally, it is important to point out that psychoanalytic work cannot proceed without its own kind of emotional involvement, insofar as its transferential and countertransferential element is always in play. Psychoanalytic theory is not just another theory that can be applied cognitively, straight out of the box. Anxiety must be given its due, and this imposes demands on researchers and managers that need to be acknowledged. Schwartz (2001) has remarked that he became particularly aware of this in the early days of his study of political correctness, when he assisted a research presentation by a consultant who did not mention the source of an organizational disaster because of its ‘politically incorrect’ nature. The consultant knew this on some level but could not bring it up, thus dooming both the problem to fester and her own contribution to remain irrelevant. The work she needed to do for the organization required work on herself, but she resisted this for the same reason the organization did. For Schwartz, this suggests that analysts, and by extension consultants, must bring the client to take responsibility, which first means taking it themselves. Such an act is not just cognitive.

Finally, insofar as the psychoanalytic approach denounces ‘the routine belief in meaning, starting with the most banal and humdrum experience of all: that of the word’ (Gori & Hoffmann, 1999, p. 37), it can render researchers more critical of their own discourse and thus more attentive to scientific language’s power of ideological seduction.

One way that organization and management researchers can more fully explore and work with language that is a mixture of analytical attentiveness and managerial concern consists in deciphering the subjective dimension of a professional text, and systematically investigating the resonance of the imaginary within its argumentation (Kets de Vries & Miller, 1987). Such a clinical approach aims to bring out what there is of an unconscious and unexpressed dimension within texts that have instrumental goals and a particular coherence. Business documents, such as value charts or audit reports, can, for example, be read psychoanalytically in order to locate slips of the pen, oversights, errors, and so on. It should be noted that this approach considers all professional texts as open to a double reading, one in the language of management, the other in that of psychoanalysis, with the second in no way invalidating the first. In this perspective, psychoanalytic theory can be particularly useful within the framework of storytelling methodologies (Gabriel, 2000).

To give a personal example, it so happened that while studying the specific constraints that directors of small business firms are subject to, I was led quite by chance to re-hear with an analytical ear an interview that dealt solely with practical items and to suddenly to become aware of the omission of any mention of his father by a director who had inherited the family firm. The text of the interview took on a whole new significance in the light of this omission. The fact of having isolated this (among other factors) led me to integrate the question of lineage – which I had failed to take into account initially –as one of my research protocol variables.

Extending the Field of Management Intervention through Diagnosis and Change

Given that management is oriented towards action through its concern with concrete results, the question arises as to how to use psychoanalytic knowledge in a pragmatic perspective (Rustin, 2001). From this point of view, the primary interest of psychoanalysis undoubtedly resides in its capacity to render workplace behaviour more decipherable (Levinson, 1976). This capacity can be of use as much to consultants (Arnaud, 1998; Boxer & Palmer, 1994; Vansina & Vansina-Cobbaert, 2008) as to managers confronted with decisions they have to make or implement. Thanks to analytical deciphering of this type, the latter are better able to identify certain psycho-affective parameters of organizational life and, as a result, anticipate or even prevent possible psychical consequences of their strategic or operative choices (by including, for example, disturbance thresholds that are acceptable to the actors involved) and thus avoid more costly and complicated recuperative measures (Kersten, 2007).

In short, the analytic perspective allows one to act in a way that avoids the traps of managerial improvisation (Obholzer, 1999). Many studies associated with the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, such as the influential work by Hirschhorn (1988) on unconscious processes developed within organizations to cope with change and the way these can be reshaped to enhance people’s professional experience, or by Carr (2002) on managing in a psychoanalytically informed manner, are examples of research that positions itself in this innovative field.

Consequently, reference to psychoanalysis both incites and facilitates self-reflection on the part of decision-makers, by aiding them to better understand the reasons for their decisions, especially as regards the latter’s emotional, symbolic and imaginary aspects, and by giving them a critical distance vis-a-vis their actions (Sankowsky, 1995). In addition it allows them, if need be, to envisage different ways and forms of functioning professionally (Dubouloy, 2004). The internalization of a new reflective capacity within organizations can, as such, be considered a major contribution of psychoanalytic consulting (Krantz, 1999) or executive coaching (Arnaud, 2003; Kilburg, 2004).

The second practical interest of a psychoanalytic approach is linked to its therapeutic dimension, insofar as managers are not able to ‘psychoanalyze organizations’ (Gould, 1991, p. 39). Rather, they are able to diagnose – and as a result more efficiently resolve – psychic disturbances that hinder group action and hamper performance by causing an increase in direct or indirect costs, particularly the cost of opportunities, and so on (Egan, 1994). The repetition of failures or inappropriate action, the disavowal of reality or refusal to face up to problems, individual or group resistance to innovation, professional stress, burnout, acting-out or inhibition of action, interpersonal conflicts preventing actors from perceiving operational stakes or implementing realistic business strategies: all are examples of psychic disturbances requiring diagnosis and resolution (Arnaud, 2007; Hyde & Thomas, 2002; Lawrence, 2000; Miller & Chen, 1994; Vanheule, Lievrouw & Verhaeghe, 2003).

It should be mentioned that, while certain warning signs such as rates of absenteeism or productivity, indicators of hidden costs and social claims can point to the disorganizing impact of pathological expressions, the latter remain most of the time behind the scenes of managerial action, being at one and the same time open secrets for actors having an intuitive experience of the field and realities that remain invisible in terms of the standard indicators.

On the one hand, such malfunctions seem to be in such a state of constant change that they are almost impossible to isolate for practitioners who tend to talk, instead, of a heavy atmosphere or communication problems. As such, a careful and measured use of the inventory of symptoms proposed by analytically influenced psychopathology can greatly contribute to recognizing them and doing something before it is too late (Bain, 1998).

On the other hand, these psychological disturbances do not, as a general rule, seem to directly threaten the existence of the organization in which they are found, insofar as organizational forms and the principle of productivity are sufficiently flexible, each in its own way, for phenomena completely external to productive activities to run their course without immediately incurring any form of radical economic sanction.

By drawing on the psychoanalytical approach, managers will then be better armed to discover – and act upon – the core mechanisms of chronic underperformances of this type (Hoedemaekers & Keegan, 2010), such that solutions appear more attainable and situations less a matter of fate or dependent upon external factors related to employees’ personal lives (Baum, 1990). Rather than taking recurrent psycho-affective problems for granted, they will tend to objectify all their different facets and thus avoid feeling – as is usually the case – somewhat embarrassed or guilty through their inability to have foreseen or identified them, or because they hesitate to involve themselves with apparently personal situations and thus run the risk of making other employees resent what they see as special attention being given to fragile individuals (Kets de Vries, 1979; Levinson, 1972).

Furthermore, managers will be able to foresee more acutely that certain unconscious processes are likely to draw on actors’ energy or provoke irremediable pathological harm in the long run – such as syndromes of failure, frustrated feelings and irreversible decisions – thereby weakening the company and putting its very survival on the line if nothing is done (Zaleznik, 1989). I might mention in this context the exemplary case presented by Anzieu (1984) of the management committee of a small business that ended up incapable, not only of taking decisions, but even of meeting because of its adherence to a paralysing imaginary scene : that of a guilt-ridden succession to an all-powerful ex-CEO.

More broadly, psychoanalytically inspired interventions can, as already mentioned, adopt a perspective of change, seeking thereby to facilitate or accelerate processes of transformation (Carr & Gabriel, 2001; Hirschhorn & Gilmore, 1989; Kets de Vries, 2006; Kets de Vries & Balazs, 1998). The fact is that, whenever organizational reality undergoes modification, actors’ imaginary investments of this reality are always likely to be invalidated, hence threatening to block processes of adaptation and instil a general climate of demobilization. By taking up the issue of organizational ends, a psychoanalytic approach is able to create new links between the employees’ imaginary investments and the demands of the new situation in such a way that restructuring is lived less as a trauma and more as a chance to redefine possible choices and facilitate demands for training or redeployment (Levine, 2001).

This is where the psychoanalytic approach shows itself to be unique and fruitful – not in providing answers apt to restore meaning and value to collective action, but in supporting and legitimizing exchanges that have no other goal than that of clarifying the connections between personal investments and institutional and group stakes, by taking heed and account of what each person has to say. Such a process of collective elaboration is only possible because it is not aimed at any operative end or decision.

This involves putting into effect what might be called an ethical concern with an added pragmatic advantage (Diamond & Allcorn, 2003; Driver, 2003), insofar as such an open approach in respect of the subject (Arnaud & Vanheule, 2007) – in terms of the actors’ creativity and engagement in action, etc. – only yields operative results as a ‘plus’ (just as being cured is a plus in Lacanian analysis). Admittedly, relegating instrumental ends to this secondary status might trouble or offend managerial sensitivity, but it is in no way fundamentally opposed to it. In particular, the strictly psychoanalytic approach, inasmuch as it is concerned solely with the contingent subject of discourse and not with Man as such, does not pretend to work towards the social or economic happiness of the latter. As such, it is capable of integrating itself more modestly within the framework of practitioners’ goals and undertakings than do approaches that intervene on the ideological terrain. An example of this kind of ethical concern is provided by research seeking to help create high-commitment organizations (Kets de Vries & Florent-Treacy, 2002).

One should not, however, forget that one of the lessons of psychoanalysis is that not everything can or should be controlled (Gabriel, 1995).

Conclusion

As I have tried to show, psychoanalytic theory can first give an impetus to research on organizations and management by aiding researchers to develop a richer comprehension of organizational functioning and managerial issues by taking the effects of the unconscious into account. Second, psychoanalysis can guide them on different ‘terrains’ of intervention, by transposing aspects of the analytical treatment, integrating transference, and so on. Third, it allows them to re-question organizational issues and managerial ends from a slightly skewed point of view attributable to psychoanalytic ethics and the recognition of the subject.

One should not overlook in this context the central place occupied in organizational and managerial epistemology by a form of hermeneutics – of which psychoanalysis can function as a vector – and the complex and undefined way this relates to a more directly instrumental approach. The psychoanalytic preference for ‘being’ (favouring the existential interrogation of the individual) rather than ‘doing’ (organizational integration, performance, etc.) might well, in fact, not be fundamentally opposed to managers’ instrumental concerns insofar as a subtle dialectic can exist between being and doing: for example, being as a way of doing differently. Such a possibility seems to me an avenue that it would be interesting to explore. Is not one of psychoanalysis’ goals, after all, that analysands in their everyday lives should be able to draw on, in the most creative possible way, the coexistence of primary and secondary psychic processes? We are thus forced to agree with Boisot and McKelvey (2010) when they state that postmodernist organizational researchers (as opposed to adherents of a ‘modernist scientism’, having its origin in the Enlightenment) are right in viewing the positivist project to falter irremediably on complexity but are wrong in believing that this is itself still impermeable to any form of managerially useful analysis.

The fact remains that such interdisciplinary fertilization can also have unexpected consequences at the epistemological level, insofar as the very notion of management can find itself transformed, through having been deconstructed and reconstructed as a result of the organizational insight induced by a psychoanalytic orientation. When a reproblematization of this type occurs, researchers or practitioners find that their investigation immediately converges not only on such resistant phenomena as repetitive reflexes or other psychopathological symptoms but also – and more profoundly no doubt – on the impossibility of the managerial function itself, in the sense that Freud was able to declare that governing, like educating and psychoanalysing, was an impossible profession. In this respect, Enriquez (2007) notes that the three professions in question are all primordially related to perilous situations of bare power.

It is, then, from a viewpoint that is at once central and peripheral – vis-a-vis that of organizational ends – that psychoanalysis can not only put organization and management sciences to work, but also indicate to researchers the best way to go about putting the relation they have with their objects (i.e. the organizations and management situations they have to deal with) into perspective – or indeed, into question.

When all is said and done, just as Lacan (1964 [1977]) was to declare that the object of psychoanalysis is not so much human beings as such, but, rather what they lack, it seems to me that the psychoanalytic contribution to the organization and management field might well pertain both to a science of what organizations lack and to the management of that which such collectives, characterized by ends, can be the object (Driver, 2009). That in question here is not some sort of void that would need to be filled or evacuated, but a lack where the subject experiences itself as desire and which has an impact on organizational functioning as a whole. In this sense, the role of psychoanalysis is to demystify the illusory positivity of organizational issues and management practices (Zaleznik, 1989), with this being a role that can be viewed as indispensable in a body of knowledge that aims at realism.