Psychoanalytic organisation theory and identity: a psychosocial framework

In this article, the author explains a contemporary framework for psychoanalytic organisation theory and identity. In doing so, he assumes a post-Kleinian object relational approach. This orientation to understanding the complexity of organisations and organising takes advantage of the ideas of Winnicott and Ogden. The notion of organisational identity and the process of identification are viewed from experiential, relational and intersubjective psychodynamics. Organisational members are engaged in three modes of organising: depressive (containment versus control); paranoid-schizoid (division versus fragmentation); and autistic-contiguous (integration versus isolation). Finally, the discovery of organisational identity depends on the collection of psychoanalytic data that involve the observation and interpretation of intersubjectivity rooted in the experience of organisational membership.