This paper represents the culmination of a transformation in my own understanding of the relationship between information and emotion in modern organizations. In this paper, I demonstrate that the recent focus and interest in management toward emotions in organizations and towards emotional intelligence are likely to remain as no more than a ‘fashion’ if we do not clearly identify why emotions were irrelevant in management science and management practices till now. My answer and my focus in this paper are on the ways in which the scientific model of information-processing in the hyper-modern organization confuses speech with information, rationality with reason, power with programming, and feeling with stimulus. As a result, the subject is separated from his or her own body and emotion or feeling, because these have no place and no value within the model. Using the French term ressenti, I suggest that a psychoanalytic approach to organisational research and consultancy can act as a counterbalance to the dominant model. The concept of ressenti, as developed by Denis Vasse and Françoise Dolto from the work of Lacan, describes ‘full speech’; that is, where the feeling and talking body and the right word emerge together, often using the path of metaphor. In such moments, the subject’s truth appears to be different from scientific truth and managerial rationality. On the basis of this understanding, we have to ask ourselves: How can emotion find a place in hyper-modern organizations? Does emotion create unmanageable disorder? How is it possible to reconcile these two perspectives in the business context? I shall illustrate these themes with examples from a research project in a multi-national firm.

I Emotion, «ressenti» and subject’s truth

The unique contribution of a psychoanalytic approach to emotion starts with the recognition of a difference between emotion itself (or feeling) and the concept of «ressenti», as developed by the psychoanalyst Denis Vasse[1] on the basis of research conducted by Françoise Dolto[2]. According to Dolto, the concept of «ressenti», corresponds to the meeting or intersection of feelings experienced in the body with words issued from the richness of one’s language.

In fact, very often, the ressenti emerges (comes to mind) through the path of metaphor. “I was stressed. I felt like a husky. Now I feel better, like a sledge leader with a team” a foreman said to me, after a team-building reorganization. Here this man’s unconscious linked uniquely, subjectively, in a form of words offered to another, the feelings of his body, and the right words issued from the richness of his language.

What is the psychoanalytic understanding of the meaning of this intersection ?

Vasse makes clear that, feelings experienced by the little child (e.g. anger), when they are named by the words of an adult, are experienced anew by the child – «ressenti»: literally, re-senti, re-felt. [The English word ‘resentment’, like the French ressentiment, is much more limited than ressenti, as it only describes the very particular feeling of being against]. In this way, for the little child, “the words give life separating him off from the sensation and introducing him to speech” (Vasse, 1995, p. 107; my italics) – and giving him an experience of joy.

According to Vasse, ressenti, like a psychoanalytic interpretation, is not the output of our conscious reasoning. It occurs when we do not know before, from reasoning or from our imagination, what we are saying to another. Following French and Simpson (1999)[3], we can compare this with Bion’s perspective which suggests that we can learn, by being exposed to truth, when we don’t know what we are doing and saying. Vasse (1999) underlines that subject’s truth is precisely given through the words[2] of the ressenti. Letting words of ressenti emerge we expose ourselves to truth. Vasse specifies that the criterion to identify such a truth are joy and peace[3]. This understanding of truth is so different to scientific truth that it will look irrelevant in modern organizations.

II Blockage to «ressenti» and the ascendancy of the paradigm of Information Processing

There are two reasons why it is so difficult to take «ressenti» into account in modern organizations: one is the ascendancy of the paradigm of Information Processing; the other the psychic disposition for blockage to «ressenti», as described by Vasse. Because they co-exist in organizations, the impact of each reinforces the other.

In modern organizations, we are faced with the omnipresence of the paradigm of Information Processing. Briefly, this information processing paradigm confuses speech and information, rationality and reason, power and programming, feeling and stimulus[4]. Furthermore, this reductive paradigm becomes a model for the human being. As a result, H. Simon[5], Nobel Prize winner for Economics and the founder of Cognitive Science, has not hesitated to define the human being as an “Information Processing System”.

The omnipresence of this paradigm can be explained by its having deep roots in Western culture. Following Dreyfus[6], I argue that this paradigm, through an epistemology inherited from Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo, transforms data from sensory experience into mathematical models; then, following the evolution of scientific method, into a logical model. As a result, this favours, in modern organizations, anonymous abstractions into acronyms and quantitative figures. Consequently, truth (i.e. legitimacy of decisions), is presented as the result of an information process, a perspective in which the subjective feeling and truth of ressenti have no relevance. (I heard a manager say to his employee, rapidly and without real attention, “Don’t be afraid by this difficulty, just have a look at the ISO 9000 procedure manuals.” And I have been told that this modern way of conceiving quality is developing in … psychiatric institutions!)

How is it that subjects can allow their sensibilities to be confined by this paradigm, and do not exercise their ability to interpret? One answer is offered by J. G. March who claims that subjects who conform to this Information Processing paradigm find legitimacy by inscribing themselves in the rational modern information processing way of producing “true” statements (March[7], Bron and de Gauléjac[8]). However, we can also understand the success of the rationalist Information Processing paradigm in the light of the psychoanalytic study of the blockage to «ressenti».

Vasse’s psychoanalytic contribution at this stage is precisely to analyse the consequences of a lack of speech in very early childhood. In extreme situations, the infant [Latin infans = unable to speak] who weeps and does not encounter a voice which will put words to his feelings, only silence, lives his birth as a catastrophe. From this catastrophe, he will oppose life and put himself systematically in the position of being “against”. In this way, the blockage to «ressenti» leads to resentment. Moreover, because his bad feelings have not received the mediation of words, he will keep his feelings silent. As a result, living his first relation to the word as a dead-end, he will have a very particular use of language. His language is abstract, in the sense of not being rooted in his body, with his sensory experience. The blocked emotion is replaced by something else; the denied anguish is replaced by fear or anger. Motivation is replacing sense-making (Sievers, 1990)[9].

III From blockage to «ressenti» to collaboration in the modern information processing organization

The reflections I shall develop here emerged from field experience conducted with one project leader in a multinational firm. For two years we undertook an action research project in which we offered regular meetings to people concerned with the use and development of an already implemented information system dedicated to the launching of new telecommunications hardware. This ‘temporary laboratory’ enabled us to identify the main blockages to and opportunities for the expression of «ressenti» in this organizational context.

The difficulty of speaking within this group, increasingly appeared to us to be related to the attitude of one part of the hierarchy. This hierarchy did not want to acknowledge its own sensory experience, nor that of group members. At the end of the first year, the setting we had created to allow an open space in which to speak, was questioned this way: “We need to reach objectives… Bottom-up approaches are not sufficient”, “Isn’t this just «cosmétique»?”

Regarding the «ressenti» of the individual subject, I shall underline the heartlessness of a management of this kind, which denies the possibility of the emergence of «ressenti», and denies suffering. The manager preoccupied by the information processing model and the objectives he has internalised, can no longer acknowledge and accept the sensitive intelligence which is speaking in his body. He is tempted to not “open his mouth” and, as a good collaborator to follow the normalizing models he has been given. By doing this he is led to alienate his subjectivity and, if we follow Vasse’s perspective, to develop psychotic tendencies: in attempting to be purely rational, he orientates himself towards madness.

IV From «ressenti» to reasonable action in modern organizations

In such a difficult context, the role of consultant or researcher (with a psychoanalytic orientation) is not to provide knowledge derived from psychoanalytic models. On the contrary, from his psychoanalytic knowledge, he knows that his role is to speak or underline the speech which comes not from a thinking brain, but from a body which experiences and feels. This means that he states his «ressenti», “even if it is related to his failures or deficiencies” (Enriquez[10])

I shall illustrate and develop this idea in the context of this action research project. A key turning point occurred in one of the regular group meeting held to review the progress of the project. As a result of discussion before the meeting I began my contribution by saying : “I have been told that some people have been embarrassed by the fact that I named people during my intervention in the course of the last meeting. I am sorry…” At that moment I perceived that the group was listening, that something was happening – like a creak of the ice field. A moment of silence, a pause seemed to be called for between each phrase. While he expressed his «ressenti», the researcher, without his knowing it, was taken by surprise by the opening up of an unexpected dimension.

Briefly described here, what were the effects of such an opening up on the deliberations which followed? Some difficulties that related to the organization of the process and were felt in the body, were expressed and heard: “ With our providers, we pull our hair out because we don’t know where the information is…” Several participants had accepted the fragility of not knowing: “Excuse me, I have made a mistake”, “Forget, what I said,…, I am totally wrong”. At the end of this meeting, joy and peace were tangible in this ‘social body’: “It went well. We have found a solution. However, we have not followed any meeting technique. Everybody has had the opportunity to talk freely”. Following Vasse this “ressenti” indicates, the human truth of such a situation.

I suggest that there are several related ways of understanding such an opening up and its effects. Following Lacan you can call this the dimension of the Other, where truth is speaking. Vasse calls this the opening to the Origin where words articulate unconsciously with feelings of the body. But you can also refer to Bion explaining that being at the frontier between knowing and not knowing, the participants in this meeting experienced a transformation from O by exposing themselves to truth in the moment. What seems remarkable to me is that, in an information processing paradigm led organization, someone sharing his ressenti became the medium of a crack in the “ice cap” of “unidimensional” information processing. And this enabled some participants to share their “ressenti” with colleagues, which led to mutual recognition through a very rational activity of organizing document management.

The word deliberation could be used to capture this linkage of rational exchanges with “ressenti” and mutual recognition. Such deliberation, because it is related to the subjects’ truth, is not only rational but reasonable as well. Thought of in this way, reasonable deliberation parallels Aristotle’s[11] perspective, according to which wise deliberation (or intelligent action) – phronesis – is linked to sensory experience and aims at what is good and right for man: “phronesis is opposed to knowledge through the mind… it applies to sensation” (p. 163).

Conclusion

The human perspective which emerges from the psychoanalytical approach to «ressenti», questions the legitimacy of rational action within modern organizations. Such a position means that managers, in this perspective, will have to struggle with the contradictions between the organization’s rational logic and the subject’s «ressenti». In this context, telling the truth means taking a risk. If appropriate spaces for speech are created and negotiations that allow for «ressenti» are possible, then creative new opportunities can be opened up. In this way, human rights are recognised and respected.

[2] In such speech, the talking body and the right word issue from the richness of language, from the treasury of signifiers (Lacan[2]), articulated uniquely and unconsciously. This expression of feeling, in full speech, often uses the path of the metaphor. Following Lacan here is the essence of subjectivity, a human being is above all a speaking being, a “parlêtre” - être-de-parole.

[3] Vasse (1999) stresses that truth for human beings is not related to the intensity of an emotion, but to the words of the «ressenti» and their effects of life in the body, unity, peace and joy.

[1] Vasse D., Inceste et Jalousie, la question de l’Homme, Ed. du Seuil, Paris, 1995.

Vasse D., Se Tenir Debout et Marcher, Gallimard, Paris, 1995.

Vasse D., La Dérision ou la Joie; la question de la jouissance, Ed. du Seuil, Paris, 1999.

[2] Dolto F., L’image Inconsciente du Corps, Ed. Du Seuil, Paris, 1984.

[3] Robert French and Peter Simpson, “Our Best Work Happens When We Don’t Know What We’re Doing”, Journal of Socio- Analysis. 1(2): 216-230, 1999.

[4] Faÿ, E, From information processing to the give and take of words, PhD in Management Science, Lyon III, A. C. Martinet Dir, March 1999, 356 p.

[5] Simon H., « Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations », The Nobel Foundation, 1978

[6] Dreyfus H., Intelligence Artificielle : Mythes et Limites, Harper & Row, New York, 1972, 1979, Flammarion, Paris, 1984.

[7] March J.G., Décisions et Organizations, Ed. d’Organization, Paris, 1991.

[8] Bron A., Gauléjac V., La Gourmandise du Tapir, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1995.

[9] Sievers B., « La motivation : un ersatz de signification »,in J.F. Chanlat (dir.), L’individu dans l’organisation, les dimensions oubliées, Presses de l’Université de Laval, Ed. Eska, Québec / Paris, 1990, pp.337-362. (‘Motivation as a surrogate for meaning’, in B. Sievers (1994), Work, Death and Life Itself : Essays on Management and Organization. Berlin : Walter de Gruyter : 1-46.)

[10] Enriquez E., « Problématique du changement », Connexion, n°4, 1972, pp. 5-45.

[11] Aristote, Ethique de Nicomaque, Trad. Jean Voilquin, Garnier Flammarion, Paris, 1965.