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(Revised Version)
Rose Redding Mersky Organizational Development Consultation |
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INTRODUCTION The genesis of this paper comes from my own personal tragedy: the death of my husband in March, 1996. At the time of his death I was doing role consultation work with senior executives of a division of a major pharmaceutical corporation. This work was commissioned by the CEO, Claude, and had his strong support and endorsement. This consultation -- which began in 1994 -- became seriously threatened when, in 1997, Claude suddenly announced his retirement and the re-structuring of the organization. Since my husband's death, this work had been my primary source of work and professional identity. In the midst of my own personal bereavement, I was facing the prospect of another major loss. As a bereaved consultant, I was particularly sensitive to the nuances of endings -- an inevitable phase of our professional lives often taken in stride. I began to think of my experience as having the potential for learning. The many ways in which my bereavement process intersected with the termination of this consultation forms the raw material for this paper. In some cases, my bereavement experience made me more sensitive to termination issues, and in other cases I think it pushed me to deny them. In deepening this exploration, I have concluded that in a world where loss and change are a way of life, the psychoanalytically informed perspective provides enormous benefit to clients in helping them to work through and resolve the often traumatic and largely out-of-conscious termination events in their organizational lives. First, however, we need to understand and manage our own termination experiences. The goal of this paper is to provide some guidance and understanding for ourselves professionally when we are faced with endings of working relationships with clients. I will briefly track the history of the consultation, provide some reflections on termination issues and their implications for consultation, and suggest some concepts for managing consulting terminations.
I. THE CONSULTATION Claude wanted to provide help to his executives to gain a better understanding of themselves in their roles and to be more effective in working as a team as well as lead their separate functions in a highly non-traditional organization (one of my clients compared it to the Wild West). Claude's vision was to move the decision-making down from corporate to the local parts of the organization and to transition to a business-driven entity. All staff functions were charged to transition their functions to more of a business model. My job was to help my two clients (finance & IT) sort through the various role dilemmas and challenges they were facing in the context of this major organizational initiative. In addition, all the data from the individual consultations were shared with the team, which was also charged with developing an organizational diagnosis for the division. This was a big assignment for me; I had never worked at this level of a corporation. I was impressed and -- at the same time -- somewhat intimidated by Claude, the president -- who was financially and otherwise supporting this project. All the role consultation data was full of each executive's "experience" of Claude, how he/she perceived her/himself in Claude's eyes, and how Claude had -- by his style of constantly questioning and demanding, as well as strongly supporting -- seemed to have single-handedly provided the necessary leadership for this enterprise to succeed. The thought of the enterprise without Claude seemed impossible. In my eyes and in those of my colleagues and our clients, Claude was an extremely powerful and important figure. It was Claude's vision of the organization that drove most of my assignments. This division was seen as doing things very differently than the larger corporate entity; one client called it a "cowboy" environment. Having started with a disparate set of foreign untapped markets, this organization -- under Claude -- had developed a hands-on entrepreneurial attitude toward emerging markets and new business. It was an exciting enterprise. I experienced myself as his instrument for these changes and had thoroughly internalized his mandate in working with my clients. My two role clients were Ann, the Controller, and Thomas, Director of Information Systems. The controller (Ann) was 8 years my junior; the IS Director (Thomas) was exactly my age. As both of my clients had staff roles, much of our work was to think about how they -- in their staff positions -- should and could interface with the line management and what ways could or should their organization's be structured to be more responsive to the business and strategic priorities of the line. Our work resulted in the significant restructuring of each function, including the (decreasing) role of corporate and (increasing) role and autonomy of regional staff, the definition of decision-making responsibilities in the system, and the development of many processes that made these functions more helpful (rather than a hindrance) to the line. The organization was driven by the line. Difficulties arose in the envy of their line peers, many of whom were their age or younger, who -- as a result of our intervention -- ultimately became closer to Claude after the staff was no longer invited to the quarterly management meetings. After about two years into the consultation, my husband died. While my husband was older than I when we met, he was physically healthy. He himself was a widower, and I knew many of the details of his wife's death and his efforts to cope with her loss. We met two years after his wife's death (Coincidentally, the same time interval between the beginning of the consultation and his death.) Until then, I had been blessed with excellent health and both of my parents were still living. My husband's death shattered my sense of security and fantasies of immortality. As we had no children, I was left alone after his loss. The news about my personal tragedy was shared with the client. Somehow I managed to attend an important meeting a week later. At the time, I was engaged in multiple projects in each clients’ organizations in addition to the continuing role consultation. In the ensuing twelve months following my husband's death, these projects expanded and intensified. I attended multiple meetings, traveled, and interacted with many new people in the organization. This work required concentration, and I was totally absorbed and challenged by both the degree of demand coming from the client and the emotional effort required to stay focused. These activities served as a major distraction and respite from the psychological distress I was feeling. In January of 1997, Claude unexpectedly announced his retirement. Not only was he retiring, but the division was to be split asunder and reconfigured. While Claude was not that much older than most of the executives who worked for him (and myself as well), it was clear that a 'new generation' -- one that had 'grown up' working for him -- would be taking over. Rumors that he had difficulties with the corporation's new CEO fueled the hypothesis that the time for his leadership had come and gone; it also fueled the belief that this once emerging and expanding organization was ready for a different kind of leadership. Perhaps the Wild West was now being settled and populated, and it was time to incorporate it into the larger parent union. Part of the division was assigned to other parts of the larger organization; the remainder was combined to form a new organization -- with a new name, a new geographic centrality, and a new president (Robert). Robert, as the former VP of a major sub-region of the organization promoted to the role of president was the obvious heir apparent. His long-term role in the organization represented organizational continuity, even though his leadership style was quite different from Claude's. This restructuring meant my work no longer had an organizational rationale, since it had been based on the old division as a whole under Claude’s leadership. I was totally devastated by this announcement, as its suddenness and complete surprise rekindled the shock and alarm of the loss of my husband, only ten months earlier. Suddenly I was again faced with an unexpected loss over which I had no control. All of the original vulnerability resurfaced. Obviously, Claude had 'taken on my husband's psychological role (and my father's) during this time. He was the providing, approving, non-judgmental, and rather distant father figure in my transference, capable of containing my own professional vulnerability. He was (emotionally to me at that time) a constant strength. Until this point, the consultation had functioned as a kind of a safety net, a protective cocoon to sustain me through my bereavement process. As an active and over-busy consultant, I had thrown myself into the work as a distraction from intrusive thoughts about my mourning. Because it existed in my professional world, not my personal one, contact with the client did not so keenly stimulate the loss of my husband. I had engaged in 'denial through action', being more action-driven than reflective-driven, particularly regarding the consultation process. With my own personal identity in chaos, the consultation had offered me a secure and steady sense of professional identity. I had somewhere to put my energies and capabilities -- a place where I was known. I had a role in the world and made my contribution to society. Through it, I had the experience of ongoing relationships – of being attached and of being valued. Critical to this process were the close working relationships with my individual role clients, who relied on my expertise and guidance for the major organizational changes they were undertaking and coping with Claude's leave-taking. While at the beginning, we, the consultants, conceived of our 'role' to provide space for thought and reflection during a time of great change and innovation, our role after the announcement was to help our client's cope with his eventual leave-taking. With Claude’s announcement, I was forced to face the reality that all of this work and its supportive function in my life could come to an end. The identity I had relied on and that had sustained me was now under serious threat. The ending of the work, however, did not come with a bang. Vestiges of it continued, which mitigated some of my initial fear. There were, however, many relationships that I had formed and a number of new projects that I was about to begin that clearly had no continuing purpose. One that was carried forward was a 360 feedback project for Peter, the chief of staff to both Claude (the retired president) and Robert (the new president). In this assignment -- commissioned by Claude -- I originally experienced myself as Claude's instrument to provide better support for the leadership. It gradually evolved, however, into one of many opportunities to become a "link" for my clients between the old organization and the emerging new one. Through the process of interviewing others in the organization and developing the feedback for Peter, I grew to know him much better. The project itself formed a vehicle by which his role in the 'old organization' and the potential role for him in the new one could be crystallized. It provided an opportunity for those being interviewed (as well as myself) to reflect at the very moment of transition from the old to the new. By the spring of 1997 it became obvious that the intensity of the work and the amount of contact was waning. It was the e-mails that struck me first. When I was working full tilt, I would receive many e-mails every day. As that changed, I would go on-line each day at first only conscious of a desire to keep current on work assignments. Gradually I realized I was seeking contact and wondering if anyone was thinking of me. I experienced great feelings of disappointment when there were no messages at all. I began send e-mails to people just to maintain the contact, to try to resuscitate the relationships and perhaps (unconsciously) bring back the 'dead'. What were my options? One was to try to hold onto the past. I did that. I recounted all the past experiences that at the time I thought would last forever (how could I have been so naive?). During the summer of 1997, I spent many hours in my office organizing files, reviewing documents, etc. As I did this, I became preoccupied with feelings of loss. I felt sad and nostalgic for many past relationships and types of work that I had undertaken. Having been so busy that first year, I did not take the time to savor them and appreciate them. Had I known then that this work would end the way it did, mightn’t I have appreciated it differently? I reproached myself. Much of the work felt unfinished and unresolved. I also began to get in touch with my angry feelings toward Claude, who had not included me or prepared me for his decision to leave the company. As his faithful, conscientious, and surely over-dependent consultant, I felt betrayed by his indifference to me. At a deeper level, I think I felt quite rejected by him. During the summer of 1997, as the messages and the work slowed down and as I pored over the old materials, my grief became intensively restimulated. I entered a period of deep mourning. In my despair, I felt that something had been irretrieveably lost in the ending of this work – something that I would never get back. It was an agony of despair and pain. As difficult and agonizing as it was, though, by allowing all the complex feelings to swirl and mix within me, I gradually began to create some space between myself and this work/client. I began to accept what was lost and to look back and truly appreciate what had been achieved by the work. I realized that I had to let the client go (at least the 'old' client, the 'dead' client) in ways that honored our work together and to simultaneously maintain my relationship to it. I hoped to be able to open the doors to a new working relationship – one which was post-bereavement in my own life and post-old division in the organization’s life. As filled with pain as I was, I knew that it was not appropriate for me to look to the client for comfort and reassurance. This was my work to do. The cocoon had been unfailing at a critical time in my life, and gradually I was developing the strength to face its loss. I knew that while my feelings were understandable, to act them out with the client was inappropriate. I also knew that my clients were certainly experiencing parallel -- though certainly not as intense -- emotions with regard to the loss of their president and the changes in the organization. I began to ask the impossible question: How could I be of support to them? By the fall of 1997 -- having finished up the vestiges of many past projects and having begun to be aware of my internal processes with regard to the termination -- I took the risk of actively initiating contact with members of the organization, despite overwhelming feelings of being disconnected from them and fears of yet more loss. All of these initiatives were well received. I attended two retirement events (Claude’s in November and his secretary’s in December). I noticed how good it felt to be connected and wondered if this was appropriate. I felt embraced by the organization, but I also wondered if this was a professional indulgence and another form of acting out. By then, I began to be interested in formulating my experience for this paper. To that end, I interviewed both of my original clients, Ann and Thomas. I asked them to reflect on the history of our work together and on the connection (if any) between our working relationship and the success of our work. Both interviews provided right insights. Ann used the interview to acknowledge her ambivalence by reviewing a crisis in our working relationship which was still on her mind: "I was so upset with you when you did not support me in the role I wanted to take at the meeting in Boston...but I was really proud of both of us that we handled ourselves well with the group and were able to talk it over afterwards". Despite the crisis, she continued:
The act of interviewing helped both my clients and myself to recognize that we were now at a different juncture. The work we had done was in the past, and while we were still in relationship with one another, that phase was over. What also helped me work through the termination was to ask Claude to write a testimonial about my work for a potential new client. As vulnerable as I felt in asking him to do this, his positive response served to strengthen me. The testimonial provided me with a sense of completion regarding the work I had done and also softened some of the anger I felt toward him and -- as it turned out -- provided a small beginning to a new relationship. It also mediated the underlying feelings of rejection his retirement had stimulated. All of these activities -- the retirement dinners, the interviews, the testimonial -- helped me to acknowledge and celebrate Claude’s successes as well as my own. As I began to think about it, the termination process for me was a termination from the old organization, from developing relationships that no longer had a work rationale, from projects that would not be realized, and from my investment in Claude’s leadership. And while all these were significant endings, they did not encompass the whole of my experience with this client or the whole of the potential between us. At the same time -- as I was working this out and 'staying' in relationship with my clients and their colleagues -- I believe that I was also helping them. I began to find a light from which to engage my clients in new ways. In doing so, I recognized a new part of my own identity emerging. I was transitioning from dependent worker to initiating professional partner. They had not died, even though the president had retired and the structure had changed. And I hadn’t died either. There was continuity. This paralleled and very much contributed to my own personal transition from the widow who had lost all to a woman who had begun to find new hope and energy for her own life and future. Another important event in the termination process was a meeting in January, 1998 with Peter, the chief of staff for whom I had done the 360 project. At my initiative, he and I had held a number of meetings the previous fall. The overt agenda had been to discuss two ongoing, but un-anchored, role consultations I was engaged in. While I had initiated these meetings, I approached them with a good bit of anxiety, as I realized there was increasingly less and less organizational rationale for the work. Each time we met, Peter used the opportunity to talk about the nature of the changes in the organization and how they were impacting him in his role. He described his experience of working for Robert and the ways in which it contrasted with working for Claude. He expressed both sadness at what had been lost in Claude’s retirement and excitement at the new possibilities emerging for him and the division under Robert’s leadership. In articulating this ambivalence, Peter began to work through the transition from the old to the new organization. I had been highly identified as one of Claude's consultants. As a colleague later observed, in some ways I experienced myself to be Claude's 'ghost' and representative in the new organization. I became a link between both the old and the new. I felt that I was holding both the respect and connection to the past and hope for the future, which is the exact parallel process in personal bereavement. By January, 1998 it became clear that there was no compelling reason to continue either role consultation. That reality was very difficult for me to accept, as this work represented (to my mind at the time) the last vestiges of my connection to the old organization. I knew it was the time to face this, and I hoped that I would be able to accept this reality when Peter and I met. I was concerned that I might act out my anxiety regarding the continuation of the existing work in an attempt to hold on to what was lost. At that critical meeting, we agreed that in the current context neither role consultation should continue. We developed a joint plan for terminating one and decided to turn the management of the other over to the person who had made the original referral. Our agreement made sense for these clients and for the organization. In one case, the client himself began to pay for the work; in the other we held a concluding session, where we both reviewed our joint work. These projects -- which in the normal course of a professional worklife would have their own life and their own death -- took on much more meaning, as they were tied to the past. My capacity to let go of those consultations and to simultaneously connect with Peter in exploring them helped me see how much I had progressed. It meant that a part of me could attach elsewhere, bear the vulnerability of new relationships, and experience not knowing what will happen next. I saw this as a critical step in the resolution of the termination.
II. THE THEORY AND EXPERIENCE
OF TERMINATIONS While certainly my sensitivity and experience was more acute than normal due to my own personal tragedy, consultants experience a certain amount of grief when any consultation approaches an end. As a matter of fact, feelings associated with grief are stimulated by even the smallest and most mundane losses in one’s life. Even those events (closing a bank account, changing doctors, buying a different automobile model) require letting go and its accompanying affects. As Freud (1917, p. 161) writes: The occasions giving rise to melancholia for the most part extend beyond the clear case of a loss by death, and include all those situations of being wounded, hurt, neglected, out of favour, or disappointed, which can import opposite feelings of love and hate into the relationship or reinforce an already existing ambivalence. My singular focus in this section is to describe what happens when endings occur and -- in particular -- what consultant and clients experience in this process. I will explore various aspects of psychoanalytic theory as they relate to termination and link them to the case example. This Section:
A.
Phases of Grief In relating the literature on personal grief to my experience with the consultation just described, I see myself as having 'traveled' through what is acknowledged as the three phases of grief (Simos, 1979, pp.32-3), i.e. Shock, Acute Distress, and Integration. For purposes of this paper, I will particularly elaborate the second phase. Phase one (shock, alarm, and denial) is universally the response to sudden unexpected loss outside of one's control. This was my reaction to the surprise announcement of Claude's retirement, which reactivated the sudden loss of my husband. Phase two, a more elaborate and conflictual stage, consists of acute grief with the continuing (though intermittent and lessening ) presence of denial. This includes physical and psychological pain and distress, contradictory emotions and impulses, and 'searching behavior' involving preoccupations with thoughts of the lost one. It is a time of deep confusion and contradictory feelings. One goes back and forth between memory and trauma, which was what I experienced doing the extensive file reviews in the summer of 1997. During this phase there is a gradual improvement, though feelings of helplessness, depression, and hopelessness prevail. Gradually there is a decrease in pain and an increasing capacity to cope. One struggles to find meaning in the loss and begins to have thoughts of a new life without that which was lost (Phase three: Integration). Asking for and receiving the testimonial from Claude was simultaneously an acknowledgement of the end as well as an affirmation of the future. As Cardona (2000, p. 5) puts it:
Phase three, integration, involves an acceptance of reality and a return to physical and psychological well-being. Hope is rekindled, and enjoyment of life is restored. One focuses on the present and the future. My current ongoing work in the organization and consultations to other organizations exemplify this phase. During this phase, there must exist or one must establish a larger containing bedrock to ‘hold’ the trauma, what Marris (Ibid.) terms "'a secure reference point'". Cardona (Ibid.) continues:
With this consultation, that containing aspect included Claude and my transference feelings toward him as well as the consulting work itself and the concomitant relationships. They played a critical role during a time of personal trauma by providing a useful and contributing identity at an extremely unstable time in my personal life. In and of itself, the work helped me "transcend (my) own difficulties" and "feel stronger and more cohesive" (Kafka 2000, p. 14). As I gradually faced and accepted Claude’s leaving and the ending of the consulting work, I was better able to contain that trauma in myself. Gradually, one's new reality -- ever more dependable and predictable -- becomes its own reference point for a new life and a sense of the future. In the third phase (integration), I gradually became able to think of a personal and professional future. I was able to re-engage with the client in its next phase of development without denying the loss of the old. B. Ambivalence Resolution of the 'conflict of ambivalence' (Freud 1917, p. 167), which characterizes every termination, is critical to a healthy ending. With any termination or death, ambivalence can be experienced in a variety of ways. There is always a sense of incompletion. One experiences regret for things left undone or unsaid and their importance is often magnified, because the unknown but once hoped-for possibilities can never be realized. These unfulfilled potentialities are no longer an integral 'part' of a larger ongoing process, to which life and energy had been invested. When a personal or working relationship has been a difficult and conflictual one, the bereaved must cope not only with the direct loss but with the grief for a relationship whose potential was never reached. As Mann (1973, p. 45) observes: "The more insecure, the more our energy will be absorbed in the search for a lost attachment." This ambivalence stimulates feelings of guilt and remorse, and one must cope with the impossibility of making reparation. One can experience the agony of lost opportunities and hopes not realized. (I felt this so keenly when so many of my projects came to an end.) Rage and anger toward the lost object is often directed at other more convenient scapegoats or denied altogether (as I first did toward Claude). One can feel a sense of betrayal, i.e. 'This was not the original contract! I did not agree to this!' Having 'transferred' my grief process to the organization, I think it was easier for me to feel betrayed by the organization than by my own husband. When one loses someone to death, feelings associated with previous significant losses in one’s life -- perhaps never properly mourned -- are triggered. James Mann (1973, p. 27) elaborates:
When a consultation ends, the loss of previous clients and projects is again stimulated. Whatever hopes had been invested in those endeavors are again revived and one's own disappointment must be faced. Every ending evokes these unresolved feelings and simultaneously creates the opportunity for a better resolution of them. C. Healthy Endings In the analytic world, terminations are (ideally) mutually agreed upon and jointly worked out over time, so that "the treatment can be carried to a natural conclusion" (Freud, 1937, p. 350). This facilitates the "critical process of withdrawing the libido bit by bit to the attached object" (Ferenczi in Freud, 1917, p. 167)and, hopefully, the resolution of the natural ambivalent feelings. For Melanie Klein (1950, p.29), termination represents success and provides a joint sense that the work has been achieved. It is a tangible moving on and requires a "long period of preparation". Ideally, organizational terminations also proceed gradually over time, so that both consultant and client can find constructive ways to address the ambivalence and work through the ending. As Menzies-Lyth (1991, p.373) writes:
She reminds us, however, that these feelings are not only on the part of the client. The consultant experiences them as well and needs "to be able to work this through in order to be able to help the client mourn" (Ibid.). This means that the consultant must work to 'contain' one's own personal grief and not project it onto the organization. This was an insight that came to me when I realized it was not appropriate to look to the client for comfort and reassurance. As Menzies-Lyth has stated, a client’s 'anticipatory anxiety' regarding the prospect of a termination is important to keep in mind. Patients, when faced with termination, often fear they will regress to their previous state before the treatment began and exhibit many of their original symptoms. Luborsky (1984, p.155) explains:
My frantic effort to stay connected through e-mails was intended to stave the certain grief of an ending with this organization and the fear of returning to a fresh stage of bereavement. It was simultaneously a denial of the loss as well as a search to retrieve my lost connections, which I feared were already dead. Mann (1973, p. 60) writes that analysts hope patients leave treatment "with the kind of internalized object that promote growth and the capacity to move away independently". In a parallel way the consultant’s hope is that the client will internalize him as a positive object (i.e. a helpful person). With that internalization, the client is more likely to make use of the methodologies and ways of thinking the consultant brought in the first place. The depth of the connection between the consultant and the client and the way in which the ending was managed influence the extent to which the work continues, even after the consultant is no longer working there. Peter Marris (1996, p. 48) notes " the connection between grief, attachment and the disruption of meaning" and that "…grieving represents the urgent need to retrieve and reconstitute the meanings which bereavement has disrupted." (Ibid., p. 118) The way something is ended has a great influence over how much is brought from the old world to the new. To the extent that one does not denigrate the past to defend against its importance, one can hold a realistic view of it -- its good and bad features -- and consciously bring to the new what continues to be of value. As Mann (1973, p. 50) observes: There is "the need both to reaffirm the enduring meaning of the relationship, and to lay it to rest, so that its reformulated meaning can be assimilated into the continuing structure of life." My ongoing work with Peter, as he transitioned from his chief of staff role under Claude to Robert's leadership, through his 360 evaluation and our resolution of the two pre-existing role consultations (old organization) are the ways in which we integrated the past consultation into the new organization in a positive way. On both sides, we were able to hold on to what was accomplished there, without having to 'throw it out' to make way for the new leadership. Our work became more identified with the organization itself than with Claude; the 'ghost' lingered as a good object. C. Unresolved Endings Unlike analysis, consulting terminations are often due to factors beyond the control of the client and the consultant. These can include a restructuring, a key retirement or resignation (as in my experience), budgetary restrictions, or a change of company philosophy regarding its approach to consultation. These factors and others can derail what would have been a natural ending worked out over time. When consultations are terminated for reasons beyond one's control, consultants and clients alike can be caught unprepared and respond defensively. This can take the form of flight from one another, clinging to one another, and/or blaming one another. Flight The abrupt termination of a consultation can be a traumatic and puzzling experience for the consultant. Often it is associated with organizational dynamics out of awareness of both parties. As Cardona (2000, p. 6) writes:
A sudden, unexpected termination can throw the unresolved issues of a relationship into sharp relief. Without the opportunity or inclination to address this, the tendency is to avoid dealing with it at all. As Gilmore (1989, p. 43) writes: "Endings…surface issues that have remained unresolved and perhaps even unrecognized throughout the relationship between a consultant and a client. The forcing into awareness of these avoided issues – what might or should have been different – often leads to flight from dealing openly with endings". Another way consultants flee the experience of a sudden termination is to seek other clients as a substitute or replacement for the lost connection (i.e. greener pastures). This serves as a way of experiencing something new and fresh that does not stimulate the feelings of loss or failure. As Gilmore (Ibid.) writes: "We noticed the speed with which we psychologically shifted to new projects, much preferring the optimism and excitement of new relationships and activities to working through unresolved aspects of the old work". This parallels an oft observed client tendency to engage in what consultants often deprecate, i.e. grabbing hold of the latest consultation fad of the day. This can be seen as an unconscious attempt to create an idealized relationship with a new consultant and the fantasy of symbiosis characterizing the beginning of any new relationship, what Mann (1973, p. 28) calls "the golden glow of unity with mother, preseparation in endless time". Searles (1959b, p. 348) expands this idea further by characterizing it as "the sense of oceanic contentment, felt omnipotence, and mother-infant adoration which are ingredients of the symbiotic relatedness." Perhaps this shift to new consultants reflects an anxiety about the positive changes that are coming about as a result of the current work. Searles (1961b, p. 550) notes the tendency of some patients to "press for a change of therapists just at a time when he is threatened with beginning to recognize how greatly he himself has changed" and to "flee from the freedom of individuality, by seeking a symbiotic relationship with a new therapist." Organizations with unresolved capacities to face difficult issues may terminate a consultancy as a way of extruding its own unwanted reality. As Cardona (2000, p. 3) writes:
Clinging In contrast to various defenses of avoidance, when an ending is near client and consultant alike may cling ever more closely to one another. For example, sometimes consultants experience difficulty in entering new consultations or projects. The potential new client that had asked for Claude’s testimonial never materialized, perhaps partly due to my lack of readiness to engage in developing that possibility. At that stage, still preoccupied with holding on to the 'lost' client, I was not yet ready to think of a new life (challenging, demanding and rewarding in its own way) without it. Also, as I reflect on it, I think I was afraid to invest in developing a new attachment, perhaps due to the fear of another loss. The fantasy of 'work without end' that would go on 'forever' is a wish that is stimulated by an impending ending. Throughout my bereavement, I tried to console myself with the fantasy that the consultation would never end functioning "as though time did not exist" (Searles, 1961a, p.502). Searles (Ibid., p. 503) has observed
Similarly a consultation can 'fool' or 'blind' us to the fact of death and can be experienced as a death defying process. Suddenly, unexpectedly, new projects appear, new problems arise, previous issues re-surface -- as the anxiety of the ending cannot be faced. But one must face the impossible. Mann (1973, p. 58) writes: What stands out vividly is the struggle around the refusal to relinquish infantile and childhood wishes in favor of the uncertain pleasures of adult reality. Adult reality means accepting the sense of the end of time, of the end of one’s self. Clinging to the therapist means clinging to what was and to the fantasy that what was shall forever be – namely, eternity…the sense of eternal time....Clinging to the therapist is, therefore, as much a means of keeping eternity alive as it is keeping alive the possible fulfillment of unfulfilled pleasure in respect to early sustaining objects. Searles (1959a, p.308) describes a critical phase in the treatment of schizophrenia, that of "therapeutic symbiosis", as part of "an evolutionary sequence of specific, and very deep, feeling involvements" throughout the treatment (1961b, p. 521). In his view the success of an analysis depends on entering into this phase and successfully negotiating its significant ambivalent processes. While this stage provides "an intense regressive satisfaction" (Ibid., p. 543) and there's a desire to stay, ultimately it must be relinquished for the sake of the individuation of the patient (and client & consultation). This is not an easy process. For one thing, the analyst must face that he is "no longer indispensable to the patient" (Ibid., p. 546). The consultant may not be able to 'see' positive changes and the client's readiness to separate. This can be compared to the reaction of the psychoanalyst who "reacts against the threat of personal loss with which the patient's new growth as an individual confronts him" (Searles, Ibid., p. 547). Client and consultant alike may not be able to resolve or even identify that a consultation is now at an ending due to what Searles (1959b, p. 348) refers to as "the patient's and therapist's mutual, unconscious denial of this element of loss". When my original client, Thomas, retired from the organization last year, we were never able to actually get together in person to say goodbye. The best we could manage was a very emotional goodbye over the phone. Blame With any ending, there is always the unspoken question: "Who is leaving and who is left behind?" (Cardona, 2000, p. 6). Terminations often raise uncomfortable issues in consultants regarding the quality of their work. In order to protect oneself from feelings of inadequacy and failure that naturally accompany an ending, one response can be to blame the client – either for what it was not able to risk, undertake or appreciate in the consultant or to ascribe malevolent motives to the client, such as a desire to see the consultant fail or a desire to feel more powerful than the consultant. By making the client defective, the leave taking is rationalized and made much easier, i.e. 'All the fault is with them, not with me.' D. Accepting and Coping with What is Lost When an ending is not wished for nor ideal, consultant and client alike must find a way to accept it. One critical capacity is to acknowledge "the limits of our intervention and to leave space for others to continue the work." (Cardona, 2000, p.5) She elaborates (Ibid., p. 6):
One must recognize that one has done one's best and hope for a "'good enough ending'" (Ibid., p. 4). She continues (Ibid., p. 9-10):
For myself, I had to accept that what work I had done for Claude's organization would not be lost but instead be reformulated in adapting to the new. Without some sort of termination process, one is often left with difficult questions to sort through on one’s own. A colleague, who abruptly had a consultation cancelled, put it this way:
Said another colleague: 'I still feel a sense of loss because we didn’t have an exit process.' When a consultation ends, a consultant loses not only a person, a project or an income, but often individually important -- but often out of awares -- intangibles. He may know "…whom he has lost but not what it is he has lost in them" (Freud, 1917, p. 155). Two colleagues describe what they experienced as having lost in the termination of two recent role consultations:
For all of us there is something that will be lost, and perhaps something new that will be found. III. STRATEGIES FOR ADDRESSING TERMINATIONS In addressing terminations with clients, three concepts are helpful:
1. ENGAGE IN A WORKING THROUGH PROCESS: Working through is a way of revisiting psychologically the lost object by continually returning to the original experience and feelings. Often likened to the mourning process (Sandler, 1973, p.123), it provides the opportunity to think about and experience the feelings of loss, bereftness and sadness intermingled with feelings of anger, disappointment, rage and guilt. Through thinking, remembering, and experiencing -- not idealizing or devaluing-- one is gradually able to work through the grief. As the lost object is re-experienced, admixed with the new, the intensity gradually subsides. Freud (1917, p.154) elaborates: The task is now carried through bit by bit, under great expense of time and cathectic energy, while all the time the existence of the lost object is continued in the mind. Each single one of the memories and hopes which bound the libido to the object is brought up and hyper-cathected, and the detachment of the libido from it accomplished. In the economics of letting go of the lost object – whether it is a lost spouse or a lost consultation – one needs to maintain consistent contact with the traumatic feelings and also have periods of relief to reintegrate and reconsolidate. One goes back and forth from the past to the present over a period of time as insight gradually emerges. One can find oneself overly flooded with grief, if too much stimulated by the lost object (as I felt when I went through all the papers of the consultation). As Marris (1996, p. 119) notes: Grieving is a process of reintegration, impelled by the contradictory desires at once to recover the lost relationship and to escape from painful reminders of loss. It is not a simple reaction to the loss of something valued, which could perhaps be replaced, but the expression of healing, if painful, impulses, by which vital continuities of meaning are eventually abstracted and reformulated. The consultant's role is to make room for this experience in the termination phase of a consultation. My meetings with Peter over the six-month period was an intervention that allowed both of us to work through this ending. As the consultant to the former organization who had forged a working relationship with him in his previous role, I met with him in his new role to jointly reflect on the changes. We engaged in a continual process of going back and forth. By exploring the issues of the past, we began to find the impetus and grounding for the future. This working through process helped both of us deal with our own experience of the ending. To this day, these meetings continue and -- while we have our losses from the past -- we have been able to say 'goodbye' to the old organization, to acknowledge that loss, as well as retrieve what is of value to the new one. Even an intervention with a different overt purpose can provide the opportunity for working through an ending. One example is the interviews for Peter's 360 feedback, which coincidentally occurred after the announcement of Claude's retirement and before the announcement of Robert's new presidency. Each interview with the organization's top executives (including Claude and Robert) involved not only an assessment of the past (in relation to Peter's role) but also a way of conceptualizing his role in the future organization. Each interviewee went through a process of going back and forth from the past to the present and ultimately to the future. 2. ACKNOWLEDGE SMALL ENDINGS AS THEY OCCUR: Over the course of any consultation, consultants can draw attention to smaller endings as they occur and explore their impact. These can include the close of each phase of a long-term project, shifts in personnel or reporting relationships, or organizational changes. Multiple recontracting during the course of a long consultation provides an excellent opportunity for regular reviews of joint work and can open the door for conversations that would not otherwise take place. One can jointly examine what was achieved, disappointments experienced, and lessons learned. The consultant can use the resultant learnings to increase the effectiveness of the project as it moves forward. Drawing attention to these small endings can also serve as a rehearsal for the consultation’s final termination and prepare the client and consultant alike for that eventuality. As Cardona (2000, p. 10) writes (citing Bowlby): "The inbuilt ending represents a sort of 'anticipatory grief ', where feelings of loss and closure can be anticipated and worked through." At a deeper level, there is "the presence of death in each moment of life prior to the actual occurrence of death" (Searles, 1961a, p. 507). 3. INITIATE AND MANAGE AN ENDING PROCESS: The consultant’s work is to alert both parties that an ending is approaching and consciously acknowledge it a natural part of the consultation. Just as "the therapist must remain insistent that the patient examine his feelings about the therapist as the end nears" (Mann, 1973, p.59), so should the consultant raise the issue of the client's feelings toward himself. This can be enormously difficult, and it is natural that both patient and client will want to avoid this. Mann (Ibid., p.34) continues:
How endings are managed and the extent to which ambivalent feelings are acknowledged and worked through significantly affect both the current and future relationship. It is at the ending where the meaning and significance of the relationship is most keenly and intensively felt and where the entire relationship is open for examination and review. Like analytic terminations, consultation endings must acknowledge the ambivalent issues buried in the experience and the mixed nature of the relationship. One can 'go back' and explore negative feelings as well as jointly acknowledge successes and connectedness (which carry their own anxiety), and potentially lay the ground for the future. Consultants need to provide clients the space and freedom to express their mixed feelings. My interviews with Ann and Thomas, for example, I believe, provided us a joint space to formally review our work and at the same time acknowledge its ambivalent aspects. Often it is the consultant's capacity to accept and contain client disappointment that allows for a stronger relationship, a deepening bond, and the possibility of connecting anew following the end of the current project. Perhaps a consultant's greatest gift is to provide clients with the freedom to move on to a new part of their lives without the lost object – the consultant. As a colleague of mine stated, this gives both parties a sense of freedom -- "being able to walk away from the consultation enables them (and us) to come back to it" – and to one another. Organizational clients face endings and terminations every day. A 'good enough' ending to a consultation provides rich substance to help clients face and cope with these constant changes. That is the priceless raw material that consultants are equipped to mine and process. CONCLUSION While endings are a fact of everyday life and occur in large and small ways our entire lifetime, it is human nature to avoid facing them. We are all comforted by the fantasy that we, our relationships, and our endeavors go on forever. In analysis, termination is meant to be final. This is not necessarily so in consultation. Consultants have the possibility of working over time with the same clients in multiple projects and to develop relationships that last a professional lifetime. To the extent that consultants anticipate inevitable endings and work with clients to prepare for them, both are helped to move onto new aspects of their professional lives in wholesome ways – either with the consultant as an internalized positive object or literally in undertaking new work together. Unless we can learn with our clients how to constructively resolve our endings, a pattern of continually avoiding its pain and grief is again and again repeated. Unfortunately, one only short-changes the process by replacement and denial. This impacts one's ability to connect anew. Ultimately we may find ourselves experiencing a double grief: for the end of the work itself and for the end of its future potentialities in the organization. The process becomes self fulfilling. If one does not become attached to the 'love object', one is not so prone to grief and melancholia when the project ends. As a colleague said to me: I am ultimately grappling with the fact that whenever I start a relationship with clients, they are going to end. If I don’t get attached to begin with, that will influence what will or won’t happen in the consultation. It can only be effective if you allow yourself to be attached, as if it were a permanent commitment…as if the loss you would suffer would be a mortal loss. Treat every consultation as if the attachment were real; as if attached for life; and if you leave it would be a death for you. In the consultation I have described to you, I have found new life and new work in the organization. As a result of the working through of this experience (including the writing, presentation, and re-writing of this paper), I have developed a renewed sense of connection to the client, to the people in the organization, and to my professional identity as a consultant. I imagine this process will continue for as long as I work there. BIBLIOGRAPHY Cardona, F. (2000) 'Ending and Regeneration: The emotional significance of ending a consultancy assignment', paper presented at the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, London, England. (Draft copy) Cassem, N. (1975) 'Bereavement as Indispensable for Growth', in B. Schoenberg, ed., Bereavement: Its Psychosocial Aspects, New York: Columbia University Press.
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