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“The instrument with which one explores unconscious processes is oneself - one's own experience of and feelings about the shared situation. If the self is to be the scientific instrument...an analyst must first undertake an analysis of their own, through which they should be able to distinguish what comes from themselves...and what belongs to the patient.”
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
“Social systems in the workplace function to defend workers against unconscious anxieties in the work. To the extent that such defences are unconscious, the social systems are likely to be rigid and therefore uncomfortable, but because of their role at keeping anxiety at bay, they may also be very resistant to change”
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
“True leadership requires the identification of some problem requiring attention and action, and the promotion of activities to produce a solution. In basic assumption mentality, however, there is a collusive interdependence between the leader and the led, whereby the leader will be followed only as long as he or she fulfils the basic assumption task of the group...[such as] providing for members' needs to be cared for...identify[ing] an enemy either within or outside the group...[or] foster[ing] hope that the future will be better...The leader who fails to behave in these ways will be ignored, and eventually the group will turn to an alternative leader...The basic assumption leader is essentially a creation or puppet of the group, who is manipulated to fulfil its wishes and to evade difficult realities.”
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
“Membership of an organisation makes it harder to observe or understand that organisation: we become caught up in the anxieties inherent in the work and in the characteristic institutional defences against those anxieties. This soon leads to shared, habitual ways of seeing, and a common failure to question 'holy writ'. Newcomers may be able to see more clearly, but have no licence to comment. By the time they do, they have either forgotten how to see, or have learned not to. They, too, require defending against anxieties, not least the anxiety of upsetting their new colleagues”
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
― The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life




