Obituary:
Harold Bridger
Harold Bridger,
the last surviving founder member of the Tavistock Institute of Human
Relations, has died at the age of 95.
Bridger was part of a remarkable group of social scientists at the
Tavistock Institute that – since its creation following the Second World War –
has made an enduring contribution to the field. These social scientists include Wilfred Bion, Eric Trist, Tommy
Wilson, A.K. Rice, Elliot Jaques, Fred Emery, Pierre Turquet, Eric Miller,
Isabel Menzies Lyth, Gordon Lawrence, Frank Heller and Lisl Klein.
Harold Bridger
was born on May 15th, 1909, and grew up in West London; his father
was a Russian Jewish émigré who worked as a tailor. Bridger’s first major contribution occurred during the Second
World War when he worked alongside the distinguished psychoanalyst and group
consultant, Wilfred Bion. Bridger’s
projects during this time – at the War Office Selection Boards, Northfield
Hospital and Civil Resettlement Units – were landmark achievements that
strongly influenced his later thinking and career.
Following the
war, Bridger was invited to become one of the twelve founder members of the
Tavistock Institute, thus beginning a remarkable association with that
institution that lasted over half a century.
Bridger also trained as a psychoanalyst, undergoing analysis with Paula
Heimann and being supervised by Melanie Klein and John Rickman, all during one
of the most exciting and turbulent periods in the history of the British
Psychoanalytical Society.
In the U.K., Bridger
worked intensively with a wide range of client companies, including Philips,
Shell and Unilever; his work with Unilever, in particular, spanned many decades
and was subsequently handed over to colleagues who formed the Bridge Consulting
Group. He also did a great deal of work
with public and voluntary sector organisations, and made an outstanding
contribution to the field of therapeutic communities; Bridger House, a
therapeutic outreach service in Birmingham, U.K., is named after him. In 1990, he helped Lisl Klein found the
Bayswater Institute in London, where his working conference continues to be run
on a regular basis. Similar working
conferences continue to be run elsewhere in London by Marlene Spero at the
Institute of Group Analysis.
Although
Bridger worked extensively in the U.K., much of his achievement lay in his work
with a number of key individuals and institutions elsewhere. During the 1950s, he entered a long and
distinguished relationship with the National Training Laboratories (NTL)
Institute of Applied Behavioural Science in the United States, where his working
conferences were run. During the 1960s
he also began a lengthy association with Leopold Vansina in Belgium, Max Pages
in France, and Traugot Linder in Austria, working with companies such as
Unilever and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation. In 1978, together with his colleagues, he
founded the Institute of Human Relations in Lucerne, Switzerland; this later
became the Institute of Transitional Dynamics.
During the 1980s and 1990s, he worked with Gilles Amado in France and
Stanley Gold in Australia, as well as consulting extensively to therapeutic
communities in Greece and Italy.
Bridger’s
distinctive contribution lay in several areas.
First, he developed and refined the ‘double-task’ approach: this
involved scrutinising and working with the organisation’s primary task, as well
as examining and working with the ‘process’, the secondary task; drawing on his
psychoanalytic training, he paid particular attention to the unconscious
dimensions of the process. Bridger made
a pioneering contribution to understanding and working with the interface
between the primary and secondary tasks, dealing with the complex issues that
emerge there, and designing methodologies and ‘working conferences’ that
facilitate the mutual development of both tasks.
Second, drawing
on the psychoanalytic work of Winnicott, Bridger developed the idea of ‘the
transitional approach to change’ (now the title of a book on his approach,
edited by Amado and Ambrose). Central
to this notion is the idea that change can only be successful if it involves
‘transitional’ places to learn and develop, as well as test out new
arrangements, relationships and working practices.
Third, he
developed ‘working conferences’ – ‘transitional institutions’ operating on
‘double-task’ lines – that ran, and continue to run, on a regular basis for the
development of managers; these are intended to allow people the space to
develop their thinking about organisations in a new way. Bridger, who developed an exceptional skill
in the design and running of these, focused squarely on bringing participants’
current dilemmas and issues into the working conference.
For his work
Bridger was awarded the Bowie Medal by the British Institute of Management, the
‘Rosa di Paracelso’ in Italy, and an Honorary Doctorate by the University of
East London.
I met Harold
Bridger when I had the good fortune to be a junior colleague of his at the
Tavistock Institute during the early 1990s.
Despite being nearly half a century my senior, I found that he
demonstrated remarkable warmth and interest in the younger generation and in
their work. I learnt a great deal from him, as well as from being on the staff
of various working conferences influenced by him.
Bridger
combined gravitas with a joyfulness
that could be both surprising and disarming.
Through his engaging personality and an uncanny skill in working with
others, Bridger made a major and enduring contribution to his field. While some were fortunate enough to work
directly with him, there are many others – working under new titles such as
‘teamworking’, ‘coaching’ and ‘leadership’ specialists – whose practice,
directly or indirectly, has been influenced by him.
Harold Bridger
married Pam Glover in 1945; they had three children and remained happily
married until Pam’s death in 1983.
Following her death, Bridger found a second family in Australia with
Roslyn Glickfeld and her two children. One of Bridger’s sons, Paul, died
tragically in Canada in 1997. He is
survived by another son, Martin, and daughter Jane.
Harold Bridger, psychoanalyst and organisational
consultant, born May 15 1909; died May 3 2005.
Some of the
material from this obituary appeared in The
Guardian on 12 July 2005.
This obituary
was written by:
Dr Mark Stein
Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour and
Programme Director,
MSc Management, at Tanaka Business School, Imperial
College London.
[E-mail: m.stein@imperial.ac.uk]