Tag: organizational change

Black Rage as a psychosocial experience

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The construct of Black Rage is rooted in the notion of moral injury, defined as: “a betrayal of what is right either by a person in legitimate authority or by one’s self in a high stakes situation...[that] impairs the capacity for trust and elevates despair, suicidality, and interpersonal violence”. Further, it represents the “trauma that occurs when one’s actions have profoundly violated one’s code of ethics, when one has been a victim of such violation, or when one has been a passive witness of such violation” (p. 269).

Moral injury induces an internal struggle between expressing “indignant rage” and controlling retaliatory rage. Black Rage is a specific response to the moral injuries, the “collective unconscious store of transgenerational traumas”, experienced by African Americans. It also contains superego imperatives about “what is right”. Stoute postulates that Black Rage is an adaptive mental construct that preserves dignity, mitigates trauma, and promotes defensive sublimation. It shields the vulnerable self from devaluation and helps racialized others in their struggle “to withstand attacks on linking, in order to preserve the capacity to think” (p. 278), to love while being hated, and to remain calm while feeling indignant rage.

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Managing the symbiotic lure

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The symbiotic lure permeates the practice of organizational management and change facilitation. It can also be observed by researchers when they cross the boundary of an organization and as they 'open up' the organization in the research process. Diamond (1988) uses the symbiotic lure as a metaphor for understanding psychological regression in organizations. It is a reaction to anxiety in which members of a group or organization “[deny] their individual differences and psychologically [merge] with each other”, often against an "other". Leaders, when enacting effective containment, play a key role in managing the symbiotic lure to prevent its potentially devastating consequences in organizations and society.

Trauma and organizations

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This recent book highlights the challenges in consulting to "traumatized organizations" - a state arising from "failed dependency" in the organizational setting. In the introduction, editor Earl Hopper suggests that "consultations to traumatized organizations are always disturbing to the consultant" (p. xxii) making countertransference an important aspect of data generation and analysis. The book is instructive for organizational researchers who negotiate similar dynamics in the doing of embedded or immersive research. The book features contributions from an international group of analysts and consultants who draw from a variety of psychoanalytic perspectives. Each chapter focuses on a dimension of organizational life in an organizational setting (e.g. behavioral health, correctional, corporate, academic) characterized by traumatic experience.

Understanding organizational splits

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Divisions (based on specialization) within organizations are necessary for efficiency, accountability, and reliability. However, these divisions increase the possibility of both structural conflict and the development of emotionally charged organizational splits. Taking a longitudinal approach by facilitating the reconstruction of the history of the problematic organizational split can open a safe and reflective space where organizational members can freely explore their experiences and begin the healing process. Psychoanalytically informed executives, consultants, and action researchers, guided by experience, reflectivity and intuition, can effectively coach organizational members through this process.