Consultancy and Emotions

I address the perennial puzzle of narcissism v. social-ism in organisations, and, at the same time, consider what is taking place in the inner world of the consultant. There is a profound symbiotic connection between the two. Our consultancy is based on participation. We both partake in the life of the organisation through our clients and we take part in it. The organisation cannot be totally an objective fact ‘out there’, but is construed subjectively ‘in here’, in ourselves. What we may agree to be reality is what is inter-subjectively agreed to be the case. We cannot be like the idealised natural scientist standing behind a one way mirror for, as scientists discovered many years ago, they participate in the phenomena they are examining and they interpret the data they are discovering. This raised the alarming possibility that the only reality is the observer’s mind, or that there are parallel universes. This was the methodological discovery of the quantum physicists. The ideal of the atomistic analytical approach is unattainable, and is a chimera.

Psychoanalysis has developed concepts that address this problem. How we get in touch with the emotions and thinking that occur not only among the participants we are studying but also between the participants and ourselves is through the use of transference and countertransference feelings; through projection and introjection. This is the basis of our consciousness of the experience of the phenomena that we are investigating. Just as our organisational clients are prone to the emotions of narcissism and social-ism, so too are we in our roles and institutions.

Narcissism v social-ism

Narcissism v. social-ism are, according to Bion, the two tendencies, ego-centric and socio-centric, that at any one point are informing groups of the impulsive drives of the personality. They constitute clusters of emotions that motivate every role holder. By extension I apply this to social systems in the form of organisations. He writes: ‘Thus if the love impulses are narcissistic at any time, then the hate impulses are social-istic, i.e. directed towards the group…’ (Bion, 1992: 122). Love and hate are basic emotions, which are always present, even if unacknowledged, in social systems. [Imagine a U shaped tube filled with mercury, for example, if the social pressure for narcissism is high, the social-ism will be low.]

This puzzle, I hypothesise, is at the heart of organisational life for not only are both impulses (the ego-centric and the socio-centric) in everyone as selves fulfilling roles but also the culture of the organisation will evoke either of these emotional impulses, depending on the valencies of the individual participants.

At present, I have no solution to the puzzle but can only state it and offer a tentative, or interim, resolution, but these two emotions (the ego-centric and the socio-centric) will always be present in organisations.

Setting them at two ends of a continuum, i.e. the extreme narcissist and the extreme social-ist. Both of these I see as pathological and I set them out, as Weber would say, in the form of ideal-types. The extreme narcissist can be characterised as constraining his/her perceptions of the world to the domain of the inner world. They have a solipsistic view of the world, construing it only in terms of their own reality. This I believe will be brought about by the culture of the social system which will be rewarding those who evince narcissistic qualities and punish social-istic tendencies.

Christopher Bollas describes the narcissistic personality as loving him or herself only (Bollas, 1987: 90ff). The narcissist seeks relationships with no objects in the environment for such objects are regarded as being part of the self-system of the narcissist. The narcissist wishes to exercise power and authority over his object relations. He/she wants to seduce the other in passive ways as he projects his image of himself. Thus he has control; ‘By inviting the other to fall in love with his image of himself, the narcissist aims to control the other’s eventual effect upon him’ (Bollas, 1987:93).

The extreme narcissist I see as being schizoid. W.R.D. Fairbairn introduced this concept which J. Sutherland summarised as being ‘(a) an attitude of omnipotence; (b) an attitude of isolation and detachment; and (c) a preoccupation with inner reality’ (Sutherland, 1989:97-98). Sutherland points out this last basic feature is derivative of a situation where the outer world is construed as having less emotional significance than that of the inner.

The extreme narcissist lives in a finite world. It is a closed system in which they are omnipotent and omniscient. The open-system of social-ism is much less certain, raises ambivalence but allows us to be available for refracted thinking. As a mark of their omnipotence the narcissist creates an organisation around them that is based on nepotism. This is what I mean by a closed system. Not for them the trials of contest mobility, but they seek the security of sponsored mobility, which they can control.

They know everything and to preserve this fantasy they will destroy the thinking processes that would enable them to be fully cognisant of the emotional experience and significance of the outer world. This is a mark, or determining feature of psychosis, i.e. being out of touch with reality. In part, this psychotic position arises from the narcissists inability to make him/herself available for transference and counter-transference feelings. In the personal economy of the extreme narcissist there is no transaction with the outer world. So they will say, “Take back your projections!” unable to recognise that the reflexivity of human relationships, with all its biases, is the stuff of human interaction.

Note on Futility

So the extreme narcissist has characteristics that belong to the schizoid personality. Underlying the schizoid personality lies a profound sense of futility. He or she feels that life has no meaning, is pointless and ineffective. It can also mean focusing on trivial matters, putting aside tragic issues that belong to the human condition, as being too difficult to entertain.

That futility is a condition of being human was well described by John of Salisbury in the twelfth century:

The brevity of our life, the dullness of our sense, the torpor of our indifference, the futility of our occupation, suffer us to know but little, and that little is soon shaken and then torn from the mind by that traitor to learning, that hostile and faithless stepmother to memory, oblivion.

As Philip Larkin pointed out somewhere, it is an achievement each day for people to get up and go about their business without being crippled by the thought of approaching death. The link between tragedy and futility is self evident.

Extreme narcissism is a defensive manoeuvre, or brings into being a personal emotional configuration, that allows individuals to defend themselves from the anxiety of oblivion. They are inner-directed and can never entertain the idea of being other-directed. They love themselves and hate, or have contempt for, the social group/sytem they find themselves in. They cannot believe that any solution to the puzzle of death will come from social-istic, mutual co-operation.

At the other end of the continuum we have the extreme social-ist. Whether such an individual can exist is open to question. Perhaps, a monk who is truly mystic? Can one imagine someone who is so other-directed that they wipe out their own individuality? Can one see someone who is so in touch with external reality that they pay no attention to what they feel as a person? Can one imagine someone who is so in touch with death and its finality that they join that state?

At its best, the concerns of social-ism, which has no political connotation, are of what is of universal concern by being a human being. Social-istic concerns are around the perennial, existential questions of being human. Why are we here? What for? Whence shall we go in the end? Social-istic questions are about living together and with what values and belief systems to hold. In short, the thinking that contributes to social-ism is that which would avoid ‘the murder of the spirit’ in organisations, to borrow Howard Stein’s evocative phrase. The realm of social-ism belongs more to the infinite than the finite; more to the unconscious than that of consciousness. It is a world of mysteries, doubts, and uncertainties about which noone can be sure and certain.

The working hypothesis is while narcissism and social-ism will always be present in organisations, we have to be aware of the consequences as they move to either extreme.

Rampant narcissism of the late twentieth century

During the Thatcher era we witnessed the efflorescence of narcissism through the growth of the totalitarian mode of management. Through the selection processes chief executives were chosen who could offer certainty. “We shall down-size to solve our organisational problems.” These simplistic solutions were subscribed to initially by the other role-holders for they offered them security and satisfied their primitive dependency needs. In time, the subservient role-holders were able to rescue their ego-functioning and, on occasion, to get rid of the narcissistic leader, who then went on to another organisation with a substantial bonus and their pension-schemes not only intact but enhanced.

This trend has continued unabated. A most important shift has helped it.

When the company sees the senior members using the company for their own ends by increasing their share holdings and options, the idea of the company serving some social-istic purpose higher than itself is seen by employees sceptically. Now selfishness reigns for, in effect, executives are selling their companies for their own financial ends.

Throughout the banking industry, for instance, we are witnessing the redundancy of older employees and the recruitment of younger ones. Those at the top remain constant, claiming that they are necessary for the profit of the organisation.

This trend of the company’s future resting with role holders who are driven by narcissism is accelerating. If this is multiplied throughout commercial industries we shall see the emergence of a very rich class and a very poor one. It may take a few years, and assuming that no government or anybody intervenes with socialistic concerns, we shall experience a revolution on the part of the poorer class. There is already evidence of this in the riots of the landless in Brazil over land ownership, for instance

The changing environment

But these trends may be a last-ditch stand on the part of the narcissists who hold power in organisations. The major change that we, as citizens, are undergoing in society is that we have moved from Industrial Society to the Information, or Thinking, Society. Whereas we moved atoms (things) in Industrial Society, now we are increasingly moving bytes of information that cannot be seen. Bytes of information are units of thinking and so we are living in a world that has more access to social-istic thinking than ever before. The knowledge, and thinking on the Internet is available for all who have a PC.

What is beginning to be eroded is the idea that the organisation is the container for work with work as the contained (Lawrence and Armstrong, 1998). Now this is beginning to be reversed in that work has become the container and it is the organisation that is contained. This trend is leading to a questioning of authority in organisations and of the executive, particularly in America. Executives are less sure of their absolute power.

Through the Internet people are working across the boundary of the organisation developing, for instance, marketing strategies that connect more closely with the customer. The organisation follows after the event.

At the same time, we can also see that through the internet people, of the retired middle class in particular, are co-operating to demonstrate against agriculture policies and capitalism. The GATT conference is a case in point. The monolithic, structures of government are finding themselves accountable in new ways. What is happening is that the new fact of IT is putting into perturbation the constant conjunction of facts that we have subscribed to culturally in Industrial Society

The tension between narcissism and social-ism will always exist and will never go away. All that can be done is to restrict the growth of narcissism for the obvious reason that it is anathema to social-ism and, therefore, any form of organisational life. What has to be worked at is the middle ground between extreme narcissism and extreme social-ism, or, if you will at the oscillation between the two. This is a much more doubtful strategy than either dealing with one, or the other as a binary solution. The consultant is often perplexed, not only in terms of the situation, but also in terms of his/her own emotions. How much is the struggling with the problem of narcissism v. social-ism in the client organisation a reflection of the consultant’s own life-long struggle?

Fostering generative narcissism and social-ism in organisations

How this is done is to be fostering the ‘generative narcissism’ and social-ism of role holders in organisations. But first this is work that the consultant has to do on him/herself. Because of transference and countertransference, projection and introjection, what the consultant feels, the client-partner will also feel, and vice versa.

The working hypothesis is that between the two extremes of narcissism and social-ism, there is an emotional position, which does not take up the ‘either-or’ posture but embraces the ‘both-and’ one, and the way to this is through both generative narcissism and generative social-ism.

This is possible through mature narcissism and mature social-ism. By generative narcissism I mean, following Bollas, the work of inner perception. It is the capacity to perceive the self. This is separate from the sense of self and is a potential in each of us that can be developed. The sense of self is subjective but the capacity to perceive the self is in the realm of quasi-objective knowledge. This perception comes about through reflecting and ruminating on the state of the self.

…now we are saying that the ego – the intelligent psychic organizer that coordinates self experience – has its own sense of being considered. Such endopsychic partnership – a generative narcissism in which the individual’s increased sensing of self is appreciated by the ego that constellates self experience into internal objects – suggests that such a director will make its productions more available for consciousness.

He continues:

If the ego appreciates the individual’s sense, then there is an intrasubjective sensitivity; I think that poets, painters, musicians and other engaged in creative work feel pleasure in their ego’s contribution to this separate sense. Is it an occasion for the unconscious to pirouette and perform in the dimly lit world of the preconscious, with consciousness turned now inward, as Echo to Narcissus? I think so. Creativity in unconscious work responds to any audience delegated by the self (Bollas, 1995: 155. Italics added).

Bollas is writing as a psychoanalyst and offers his solution in, what Bion called, Oedipus terms, i.e. in terms of the pair, in this case of pair of the self and the ego.

As organisational consultants we have to find the answer in terms of sphinx, for our concern is not the individual but the thinking of the whole enterprise in the context of its environment. This term ‘sphinx’ Bion used to describe the knowledge and meanings that groups generate. Sphinx takes us beyond narrow Oedipal concerns. If the focus of Oedipus is sexuality, that of sphinx is our relation to knowledge

As organisational consultants we engage with people in their roles in social systems. Engaging in role and addressing the social-istic concerns of the enterprise we enable the move to be made from the extreme pole of narcissistic concerns. The experience of social-ism allows changes in the ego to occur. Through the role the self has an opportunity of looking at itself and so allows the ego to become observer to itself, or to see itself in context

By generative social-ism I mean the meaning and significance of life and work, at a historical point, in the context of the individual in role in a social system. This contextual analysis and synthesis directs thinking at the enterprise and its environment, disentangling meaning. I see the Internet as being a source of generative social-ism.

The working hypothesis is that this work can be done through Role Consultation but, more pertinently, is done through focusing in organisational analysis on sphinx issues, or social-istic matters.

But it is not so straightforward as this because the trap for the consultant in working with a narcissistic person is that the consultant is caused to fall in love with the image of him/herself and so is seduced from sphinx and social-istic issues. This is evidence of the symbiosis between consultant and ‘client’.

The self and ego in partnership delegate to the role, which is one focus of our concern, this unconscious work. Role implies other role holders in a social system. They become the contextual audience. This means that the role holders in the system focuses on how knowledge and meaning are made, i.e. sphinx concerns. It is this that enlarges the space of the possible for the individual role holder and brings about generative narcissism and social-ism. Once we can grapple with social-ism as an emotion we enter into the domain of mature human beings, able to face the meaning and significance of futility and tragedy and to make meaning for a creative life.

To summarise the puzzle:

ORGANISATION

Extreme Narcissism v. Extreme social-ism

Ego-centric Socio-centric

Loves the self Loves the other

Schizoid Non-schizoid

Seeks solution to Seeks solution to futility in the self futility in others

Inner directed Other directed

Denial of tragedy Fatalistic acceptance of tragedy

Finite world Infinite world

Psychotic Non-psychotic

Generative narcissism <---> Generative social-ism

= creative culture in the

ORGANISATION

What thinking can be generated by this puzzle?

References

Bollas, Christopher (1987) The Shadow of the Object. Free Association Books: London.

Bollas, Christopher (19950 Cracking Up. Routledge: London

Bion, W. R. (1992) Cogitations. Karnac Books: London.

Sutherland, J.D.(1989) Fairbairn’s Journey into the Interior. Free Association Books: London.

Lawrence, W.G. and Armstrong, D. (1988) Destructiveness and creativity in organisational life: experiencing the psychotic edge. In Bion Talamo, P., F. Borgogno, and S.A. Merciai, eds., Bion’s Legacy to Groups. Karnac Books: London.