PSP Case 4

THE BISHOP AND THE HACK

DEALING WITH ‘COUNTERTRANSFERENCE HATE’

IN A CASE OF MODERN PSYCHOANALYTIC CONSULTANCY

Rev. Wallace N. Fletcher, D.Min.

The Dialogue Center

Introduction

This is a case of consultancy in which Modern Psychoanalytic principles[i] [ii] were used to help a state-wide denominational body review and refine its organizational structure. This structure was created three years earlier as the result of a merger between two smaller bodies representing churches in Northern and Southern parts of the state.

The original bodies dated back to the Civil-War and had evolved distinctive cultures. The Bishop who was head of the former southern body was appointed with a mandate to accomplish the long-overdue merger. Sensitive to criticism that his denomination and his own management style were too ‘top-down’, he supported efforts to create a more democratic structure than the one’s being replaced. He also wanted to avoid the mistake of fusing two entrenched cultures that might compete perpetually for dominance. The new body was to be “a new creation” (II Corinthians. 5:17)[iii].

The Bishop was a well-liked and visionary leader who could also be impulsive and autocratic in ways that belie his democratic ideals. In pushing the merger forward he had had to expend considerable political capital. He let me know early on that he hoped to be reappointed to a more prestigious position once his eight year term as Bishop of this conference was done. Since his term was due to end soon after the completion of this project, it was clear that he was concerned about his legacy. He did not want his successor to inherit a new structure that was unrefined and perhaps unmanageable.

Our contract was with the Bishop and the “New Day” Council (hereafter “the Council) charged in the new structure with on-going review of the organization’s overall effectiveness. In response to concerns about how well the Conference’s new organizational structure was working, we were engaged to:

1. Conduct 18 listening sessions for both clergy and lay leaders representing member churches across the state.

2. Present perceptions gathered from these meetings in a report to be shared with all the participants as well as all the major work groups (executive staff, key committees etc.) responsible for running the organization.

3. Conduct meetings with each of these work-groups to discuss the report in depth and gather their suggestions for improving the Conference’s new structure.

4. Assist the Bishop and Council in preparing a final report and recommendations based on the best suggestions made during these meetings. This report was to be presented by the Council at the Conference’s next annual meeting and referred back to the Bishop’s executive team for implementation. Except for implementation we had nine months to complete this project.

Modern Psychoanalytic Consultancy

During the period in which I was working on this case, I was a senior candidate for certification at the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis[iv] and made ample use of my supervision and training analysis for managing its complexities.

The Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis teaches an approach to working with narcissistically injured and sensitive persons developed by Hyman Spotnitz and his followers (called “Modern Psychoanalysis”). In Spotnitz’s view such clients do not benefit from interpretation of their unconscious problems because these are too easily experienced as attacks upon such individuals’ fragile self structures. While Freud viewed these clients as unsuitable for psychoanalytic treatment^{^[v]}, Spotnitz developed a range of techniques aimed at helping them keep talking until the unbearable affects they are defending against become available for verbal processing and hence, more bearable.

Many organizations and their leaders are vulnerable to the same level of narcissistic sensitivity as the clients Spotnitz treated. This is understandable in terms of Kernberg’s[vi] observations about the primitive levels of emotional vulnerability that are regularly activated in organizational life. Such vulnerability may be all the more prevalent among the religious organizations with which our group regularly works. For these tend to be “main-line” protestant denominations that have been declining in membership and influence for several years. Many are near organizational ‘melt-down’ and hence annihilatory and persecutory anxieties are very near the surface.

In our consulting work with such organizations we have found the application of ‘Modern Analytic’ principles and techniques extremely helpful. Among the ones we rely upon most are:

1. The concept that our job as consultants is primarily to help leaders resolve[vii] their own and other member’s resistances to the ‘real work’ of their organizations. By ‘real work’ we mean what Heifetz calls ‘adaptive work’[viii] and what we modern analysts call ‘maturational’ work. Real work is contrasted with ‘pseudo-work’ which is the apparently meaningless work (unnecessary meetings and administrative processes) through which organizational leaders and members avoid anxiety[ix] and intolerable feelings stimulated by their ‘real work’.

2. Joining the client’s frustration and fear of blame by normalizing their maturational struggles. Thus, our first ‘intervention’ was in the goals we proposed in our proposal. Resisting language like ‘evaluate’, ‘fix’ or ‘re-organize’ yet again we emphasized: how the creators of this structure did a fine job but could not have anticipated all its challenges before living into it for awhile. We suggested that three years is just about long enough to discern improvements that will help the organization develop further. We said that all three-year-old bodies are naturally full of energy and intelligence but lack the smooth coordination that comes with maturation. And we emphasized that their work and our process was not essentially corrective (inviting scape-goating) but maturational i.e. agreeing on the practical improvements that will enable the organization to identify and take its next maturational ‘steps’.

3. Developing a mutually agreed upon consulting ‘contract’ that stands for ‘real work’ and places it between the consultant and the client. Thus, the ways consultant and client interact in ‘keeping the contract’ provide important opportunities to study and address the critical resistances and counter-resistances that need resolving to help the client (and the consultant) grow.

4. Making frequent use of ‘object-oriented questions’[x], ‘joining techniques’ and emotional communication[xi] to help clients feel understood and resolve resistances to ‘real work’ (especially those stimulated by the consultant and the contract).

5. Making spare use of interpretation to avoid causing narcissistic injury and to help clients make discoveries and recommendations they can genuinely ‘buy into’. Thus, we tried in both of the reports we prepared during this process to frame things in ways those we talked to would recognize as their own ideas and suggestions (as ego-syntonic). We made only two real interpretations which we introduced mid-way through the process and offered as hypothesis that our clients could own or reject. Both proved helpful primarily in as much as they legitimized wide-spread feelings of frustration and impotence while avoiding blame.

6. Studying and following the ‘contact function’ [xii](that is, the way clients do or do not seek contact with the consultant) as a way of understanding and engaging deep patterns of communication and resistance that impede the client’s development.

7. Studying and making judicious use of our own countertransference feelings/fantasies to understand our clients and resolve counter-resistances that undermine our effectiveness.

For the remainder of this presentation, I will focus chiefly on the last two of these activities since they represented areas of major challenge for my partner and me in working with this client.

The Client’s ‘Contact-Function’

My female partner and I had strong impressions and feelings about our client’s contact functioning from the outset. The person who engaged us initially was the female member of the Bishop’s executive staff (Rev. Y.) who was his chief liaison to the Council. We both knew this woman well and understood (without her saying so directly) that this was a politically sensitive project involving significant risk and opportunity for her and her role.

While several other consultants had been invited to submit proposals, we sensed that Rev. Y. had most confidence in us and wanted us to be the ones chosen. Nevertheless she contacted me only after other proposals were in hand and just a week before the Council was to make a final decision on consultants. In making her last-minute request she also shared details about other proposals as if to steer me away from pit-falls.

In accepting her challenge to write a proposal and present it to our potential client on such short notice, I felt at once excited (this would be the biggest and most complex case of this kind our group had taken on), irritated, intimidated, confident and subtly demeaned. I speculated that the other contestants were invited first because they were more prestigious than us. I sense that she turned to a trusted friend because she knew she could and only after learning how expensive and emotionally off-the-mark our competitors’ proposals were.

As the project unfolded our feelings and experiences around this initial contact proved important in several ways:

We came to understand that the mix of feelings induced in us were a good indicator of the strong ambivalences and feelings of vulnerability shared by many leaders across the organization.
We felt first hand the anxiety and frustration-aggression felt by many within the organization because of ambiguous assignments, inadequate lead time, hurried communication, ambitious expectations and the threat of narcissistic injury for failure.
In responding despite our countertransference with a proposal that anticipated and offered a safe process for exploring and addressing some of these issues, we gained strong emotional leverage with Rev. Y. She became an indispensable ally of our process, making an appearance at least 30 or more of the meetings we conducted. While understandably guarded about some things, she proved in general to be open, a reliable source of information and a trust-worthy internal sounding-board for us.

The other person whose ‘contact-functioning’ we knew was critical to understand and follow was, of course, the Bishop himself. This proved to be a major challenge as we sensed all along the way his deep ambivalences toward us and toward this project. Clearly he had a great deal at stake in a broadly participatory process he could not directly control without undermining conditions he had agreed to or appearing autocratic. Thus, he communicated his unconditional support for us and for our process, while keeping my partner and me ‘at arms length’. As would any leader in his position, we sensed he needed the options of ‘taking credit’ if our process went well and scape-goating us if it did not.

To mitigate his (and our) feelings of vulnerability my partner and I contracted to meet with him upon completion of major phases of the project and at any other times upon request. He in turn pledged his commitment to the project, his confidence in us and his accessibility—even giving me his cell-phone number. In spite of this overt cooperativeness, it became clear to us from the start that I would be expected to initiate each of our meetings and that he expected most of these meetings to be one-on-one meetings with me as President of the Dialogue Center. Each of the meetings described below occurred at the Bishop’s headquarters.

My partner and I mirrored the Bishop’s resistance to dealing with us as a team by agreeing to my being ‘the point person’ with him. This was in part a ‘join’ and perhaps, in equal part a reflection of the counter-resistance he induced in both of us.

First face-to-face meeting:

This meeting occurred early in the process at my initiative. My purposes in asking for the meeting were (a) to establish rapport (b) to learn what I could about the Bishop’s primary assumptions, anxieties and expectations regarding the project and (c) to invite his perspectives on the history and current state of the organization. Though overall these objectives were met I was aware throughout the meeting of feeling ‘one down’ and uncomfortable.

The meeting was set up by his Administrative Assistant as a lunch meeting and was held in a large conference room. The Bishop’s place was set at the head of a long conference table and my place was set at the right hand corner next to him. During our meal and conversation I felt the Bishop’s imposing physical presence and wished for more physical distance between us. He is tall, handsome, extroverted and seductive. I felt small, crowded and clumsy at his side.

The Bishop invited me to ask questions and was forth-coming in response. I learned a great deal about the background of the merger and his investment in its being viewed as a success. While positive overall in his assessment of the new organization’s progress he acknowledged that it felt too much to him like a ‘messy baby’ that needed more cleaning up before handing off to a successor. He let me know that he was looking forward to being reappointed to a more distinguished assignment in recognition of his leadership creating this organization.

Driving home I felt mildly depressed and irritated as if I had been ‘off my game”. I felt that this was going to be a hard project to endure and that my relationship with the Bishop in particular was going to be emotionally taxing. I recalled my supervisor’s advice when I talked with him about my anxieties going into this meeting. “Remember”, he said “you’re just a ‘hack’.’ [xiii] I felt strangely comforted by this recollection.

Second Meeting:

This meeting took place again at my initiative and again at the Bishop’s conference table. It occurred after we had completed our data gathering and prepared our first written report. My purposes were (a) to learn the Bishop’s reaction to the issues summarized in the report and the ways we had framed those issues for the next phase of the project (b) to anticipate with him the kind of work we would being doing with the major work groups (two of which were with his closest executive work groups) we would be meeting with and (c) to learn of any new concerns, expectations or insights he might have at this turning point in the process.

At this meeting I felt more confident having already received strong confirmation of the validity and helpfulness of our report from the designated steering group on whom we tested it. The Bishop’s response was one of respect and appreciation for our work. He gave me the opportunity to walk through the report and clarify with specifics. He was especially interested in perceptions about his own leadership style which were positive about his vision and good intentions while candid about his tendency to behave autocratically and impulsively under pressure.

Our meeting ran longer than expected and we both ‘loosened up’ considerably. When he learned that his next appointment, the new president of a college he was Board chairman of, was waiting, he impulsively invited him in to listen in on the rest our meeting. As we wrapped up, he praised the Dialogue Center and me to the college president and suggested that we might be helpful to the college. The college president seemed understandably uncomfortable but said he was impressed with what he had heard.

Driving home I felt satisfied with the meeting and somewhat inflated by the Bishop’s praise and referral of an interesting potential client. At the same time I felt wary and wondered how long the Bishop’s high esteem would last. “Remember”, I said to myself, “you’re only a ‘hack’”.

Third Meeting

This meeting took place in the Bishop’s private office near the completion of our round of meetings with various work groups and just prior to our two day planning retreat with the Council.

In this meeting I wanted to test some of the recurring themes/ ideas/proposals that I had reason to believe would be emphasized in the Council’s final report. I felt this to be especially important since as head of the Council he should have been present at the retreat and able to provide his input directly. I learned too late, however, that the Bishop had permitted the retreat to be scheduled during a weekend he was obligated to be at a national denominational meeting. I was obviously concerned about producing ‘surprises’ out of the retreat that would raise insurmountable objections from the Bishop after the fact. There were only about four weeks between the Council retreat and the Annual Meeting at which our final report was to be presented. There would not be a lot of time/opportunity for negotiation if the Bishop had many big objections.

For the most part the Bishop seemed receptive to the ideas I tested on him. I could tell that he grew anxious, however, when I presented him with a draft of new organizational chart I thought might emerge out of our work. This chart tried to clarify the relationship between the hierarchal and non-hierarchal aspects of the organization which up to now had been left ambiguous. While finding the chart intellectually interesting the Bishop said he thought it would be too confusing for most to find helpful. I got the feeling that my chart was experienced by him as an ‘interpretation’ that went too far. I resolved not to be wedded to its inclusion in our final report.

I left this meeting feeling that I had gotten a pretty good ‘read’ on the Bishop’s reactions to the ideas we had been hearing and formulating. I also did not feel either as depressed as after the first meeting or as inflated as after the second.

My counter-transference hinted to me that the Bishop had strong un-verbalized transferences toward the project and toward me, both positive and negative. I sensed anxiety that we might produce results that went too far or not far enough—in either case creating problems for him. My association as I write this is to the many men I have seen in my practice who want to divorce their wives but feel too guilty to leave without providing for her in ways that free him of feelings of obligation. Perhaps the Bishop just wanted this project ‘done’ so that he could be done with an organizational spouse that burdened him too much.

Final Meeting

This meeting was to have been a last one-on-one prior to our presentation of a final draft of the report to the executive group that had to recommend it (or not) at the Annual Meeting (one week later). The draft had already been seen and well-received by the Council.

I sent this draft to the Bishop as soon as it was completed along with as many opportunities to conference as my schedule would permit. My reasons for wanting to review it with the Bishop personally were to show the deference to his office I knew he expected, and to invite any objections while there was still some time to address them. Of course, at best, I wanted his direct praise and appreciation for the outstanding job I felt my staff and I had done. This latter piece of counter-transference mirrored one of the hungers I sensed among many hard-working members of the organization including perhaps, foremost, the Bishop himself.

In fact, the Bishop never responded directly to this last invitation to meet. In one way this was not a complete surprise. It is characteristic of this organization and of the Bishop himself to be busy ‘down-to-the wire’ with matters needing urgent resolution. On the one hand, his apparent lack of need for direct conversation about the report suggested tacit approval.

On the other hand, since I could not be sure of this I felt considerable anxiety about our upcoming final meeting with him and his executive team. All the feedback I received from the Council and his deputies pointed to a favorable response from the group. Still, I was left with a powerful dread that the Bishop might save his objections for a public attack that would bring shame to me and my organization. I experienced the Bishop’s silence prior to the executive meeting as demeaning and sadistic. As I tried to prepare myself for the meeting I was distracted by fury and paranoia. I worried that these intense feelings might affect my performance at the meeting especially if the Bishop expressed any criticisms of our work.

Dealing with Hate in the Consultant’s Countertransference

Projects like this one inevitably stimulate intense ambivalences between consultants and heads of organizations. If the consultant is not viewed as a peer he is not respected or trusted. If the consultant appears too competent or omniscient, on the other hand, he can be felt as a rival.

In most cases organizations are experienced by their leaders and members as maternal introjects[xiv] while leaders are experienced as paternal ones. The more intimately the consultant’s assignment involves him in the relationship between the organization and leader, the more oedipal and pre-oedipal conflicts are apt to find expression in the emotional relationship between consultant and ‘head’. Projects involving decisions about the organization’s structure are especially sensitive. Contact with organizational structure is symbolically equivalent to intimate contact with the organization-mother’s body and thus places the consultant between her and the leader in a dangerous way.

Given all this, the Bishop’s alternately admiring and condescending treatment of me was not surprising. Still, managing my countertransference was a major challenge for me (as well as my partner) throughout this case. My feelings by the end were certainly those Winnicott described as “countertransference hate”[xv]. I was aware of both “objective” and “subjective” kinds and relied heavily upon my partner as well as my Modern Analytic analyst and supervisors to help me process them.

Yet, preparing for the meeting in which I was to share our report for final review by the Bishop and his management team, I felt that I was as close as I had come to losing self-control. I understood that if I responded too defensively or reacted with rage to criticism during this meeting, I could very well undo much of the good work our team had done—not to mention the damage I could do to our organization’s reputation.

I was greatly helped with this problem by processing two childhood memories that occurred to me during the week prior to the meeting. Neither of these memories was new and both had been worked over a number of times in my analysis. I have learned to heed their recurrence especially during stressful times as a message from my unconscious about the meanings of my distress.

First memory

I am riding in a panel truck with my father who has taken me on one of his sales trips. The doors on both the passenger and driver side are open for ventilation. We are on the way home and he tells me he wants to play a joke on my mother when we arrive. Instead of going in the house he tells me I am to hide in bushes outside the house until he calls me. He is going to tell my mother that I fell out of the truck and was lost on the ride home. I wait in the bushes a long time wondering what is going on inside. When I peak in the window I see that my mother is crying and my parents are fighting. I wonder if my father has forgotten me. I feel fearful. I don’t know whether I should go in the house or stay outside until I am called.

Second memory

I am on my first overnight camping trip with scouts. When it is dark some of the more experienced boys take me and other novices out on what they called a “snipe hunt”. I had never heard of a ‘snipe’ and felt suspicious. The boys position me behind a rock and tell me to wait there until a snipe appears. They leave me there alone. I wait a long time suspecting I have been tricked but not certain. It seems very dark. I think I know the way back to the camp but am fearful of getting lost or being ridiculed a coward if I leave my post. As in the first memory I am left on the outside wondering what is going on the inside and when/whether it will be safe to go in.

It was only when both of these associations crossed my mind within seconds of each other that I understood their relevance to my current plight. When the Bishop did not keep our last meeting I felt very much left out in the cold by someone I felt both wary of and dependent upon. The feeling of being led somewhere, left, then possibly forgotten; the suspicion of being tricked or used; and the anxious uncertainty about whether to ‘barge in’ or wait until I am summoned all described feelings induced in me by this case.

While there were obviously strong subjective elements in my countertransference I was convinced immediately that there were strong objective ones as well. My powerful feelings of fear and rage were induced by the Bishop’s inconsistent contacts and may even have reflected feelings he was repressing while waiting to learn how his administration would be judged by those who would decide his next assignment.

Processing these associations with my partner, analyst and supervisor proved critical to my being able to manage my induced anxiety and anger during my final meeting with the Bishop and his team. In spite of my negative feelings I was able during the meeting to convey understanding and respect for the Bishop as well as the people to whom we had listened and whose best ideas were represented in our final report.

After my presentation the Bishop commended our work highly. Interestingly the qualities he focused on were our apparent care for his organization and our regular, consistent communication along the way. We sensed from the beginning that this organization and its leader needed a certain kind of emotional communication as much as it needed sound advice about its structure. The response we got at the end of this meeting seemed to confirm this intuition.

A Note on Hacking and Modern Analytic Consultancy

As I was writing up this case I was surprised by the importance of the way I felt ‘joined’ when my supervisor reminded me that I was ‘just a hack’. This says something about the kind of ‘holding’ consultants and even Bishops need in order to bear the work they do.

Roles like Bishop and consultant regularly stimulate oscillating grandiose and worthless self-states that mirror primitive transferences coming from the organizations they serve. A consultant can feel and even behave like a creative genius one moment and a clumsy hack the next depending in large measure on how a group or organization relates to him. These experiences represent important communications from the unconscious of the organization but tolerating and deciphering these messages places a strain upon the mind/soul of the consultant.

When my supervisor made the comment about hacking I felt he was someone who understood my work and the pressures it involves. I felt I was talking to someone who could provide the measure of empathy I needed as much as sound advice. This, of course, is what a good consultant strives to provide for his clients. And it is what I found most challenging to do for the Bishop.

The term “hack” indeed communicates a great deal about the ways consultants are experienced and function. Among the several meanings I found in my Webster’s Dictionary[xvi] are references to:

· Authors who exploit their talents writing cheap fiction or, in the case of ‘guru’[xvii] consultants ‘quick fix’ books

· Experts who exploit their knowledge for easy & unmerited profit

· People or tools that cut or hack up things grossly

· Cab drivers

· And a certain kind of work-horse.

The first three of these meanings are familiar to me as expressions of the normal suspicion consultants must endure and too often deserve from their clients. I like the ‘work-horse’ reference, however. This kind of work horse is best at carrying loads that need carrying, not looking like a ‘thorough-bred’. When a modern analytic consultant does his/her work well it rarely looks that impressive. Indeed, it may be hard to tell it from ‘hacking’. The tools we use resemble the work-horse more than the race-horse.

Conclusion:

In focusing (a) on contacts between the Bishop and myself and (b) on the management of my own countertransference I have greatly over simplified a complex case that involved many other people and dynamics-most especially those involving my partner. Nevertheless, much of what proved most challenging for both my partner and I are concentrated in these interactions.

Revealed in the interactions between organizational leaders and the consultant’s they invite in are not only their own individual and interpersonal issues, but those they ‘hold’ for the organization as a whole by the ways they must internalize the organization as a whole[xviii] in order to do their jobs. This usually includes affects the organization finds hardest to bear.

Thus, processing intolerable affects ‘goes with the territory’ of organizational leadership as it does with practicing psychoanalytic consultancy and psychotherapy. While dealing effectively with this territory is not the only thing leaders, consultants and analysts must be able to do, it is a critical part of the job.

Thus, while managing cases like this one I find remembering Winnicott’s sage advice ‘a must’:

“In doing psycho-analysis I aim at:

Keeping alive

Keeping well

Keeping awake

I aim at being myself and behaving myself.

Having begun an analysis I expect to continue with it, to survive it, and to end it.

I enjoy myself doing analysis and I always look forward to the end of each analysis. Analysis for analysis’ sake has no meaning for me. I do analysis because that is what the patient needs to have done and to have done with. If the patient does not need analysis then I do something else”.[xix]

None of this, of course, is as easy as it sounds.

Works Cited