Lacanian Resources for Organizational Consulting

THE SYMBOLIC ORDER

Master Signifiers

Consider first the Symbolic Order, the central instance of which is language. Lacan emphasizes two fundamental aspects of the Symbolic order as sources of identity, anxiety, desire, and enjoyment. The first is the value of particular signifiers within a given code, or positions within a given system. Any code or system- whether it be a general cultural code, a professional code, a familial code, the code of a particular organization, or the organization itself as an articulated system of positions-valorizes certain signifiers or positions above others, and it is these valorized positions, these signifiers, that we desire (often desperately) to embody. Such signifiers, according to Lacan, constitute our ego ideal, and the extent to which we convince ourselves that we embody these signifiers determines to a significant extent our sense of identity and self-worth. The ego ideal is constituted through our identification with certain key signifiers, or "master signifiers," which include words such as "man," "woman," "athlete," "scholar," "fair," "honest," "powerful," "independent," "sensitive," "shrewd," "brilliant," "daring," "innovative," and "competitive" that define us, give us identity, for ourselves and for others. This aspect of our identity-construction begins when we begin to learn language. In learning language, we come to recognize ourselves as either male or female and as being of a certain race, ethnic group, class, religion, and nationality, as well as being "good" or "bad," "smart" or "dumb," "strong" or "weak," "big" or "small," and so on.

These signifiers of our identity are very precious to us, for they are quite literally essential elements of our being. Our embodiment of signifiers valorized within a code can provide us with a profound sense of well being and enjoyment, and, conversely, our failure to embody such a signifier, or our embodiment of signifiers denigrated within a given code, can cause us severe anxiety or depression or evoke powerful feelings of aggression in us. Thus a fundamental and continuous aim, present to some degree, although not necessarily consciously, in virtually every utterance and action, is to consolidate and enhance our ego and its sense of identity by allowing the ego to recognize itself as embodying the signifiers constituting its ego ideal. We can see the significance of this identification with signifiers by observing the extent to which people will go to defend both the integrity of their identity-bearing "master" signifiers, as well as their own claim to these signifiers: most people become upset when someone denigrates one of their master signifiers--as, for example, in the statement, "Men are pigs!" or when someone threatens to deprive them of one of their master signifiers, as with a statement like, "You're not a real man!" or "You're not a true American!"

This powerful need we have to reassert both the importance of our master signifiers and our embodiment of these signifiers is frequently a cause of suffering both to ourselves and to others, because it coerces us to repress qualities, desires, and enjoyments that contradict these master signifiers, as well as to try to manufacture desires and enjoyments that we don't have. The signifier "girl," for example, with its connotations of "sugar and spice and everything nice," traditionally coerced many young women to repress their aggressive impulses and feelings of anger, while the signifier "boy" has functioned to encourage the manufacture or simulation of aggression where it does not exist and the repression or denial of passive impulses and feelings of tenderness or vulnerability.

One aim of Lacanian psychoanalysis is thus to help clients become aware of their master signifiers and of the conflicts and suffering these signifiers are causing. Such a strategy is also available for psychoanalytic intervention in organizations and other groups. In fact, although not always labelled psychoanalytic, this strategy has been a valuable resource of various liberation movements. Women's liberation, for example, produced through various consciousness-raising activities the general recognition that the master signifier "lady" was a significant factor in the suffering and oppression of many women, insofar as its connotations of restraint caused many women to suppress or repress their sexual and aggressive impulses in order to embody the master signifier "lady. Becoming aware of the intrapsychic conflict caused by this master signifier helped many women resolve this conflict and escape the suffering it caused by discarding the signifier "lady" in favor of the signifier "woman," which was free of the connotations of libidinal and aggressive repression. This same strategy of analysing master signifiers also enabled the production of a new signifier, "Ms," to replace "Miss" and Mrs."

A useful question in organizational consulting, then, would be: What are the master signifiers-general cultural, professional, or group-specific-that dominate a given organization? What kinds of identifications, anxiety, desire, or enjoyment are elicited or supported by the master signifiers? What kinds of intrapsychic conflict and suffering do these master signifiers produce, and does this conflict motivate destructive or counterproductive behavior, or inhibit productive behavior?

Before these issues can be explored, one must first identify the dominant master signifiers. One way to do so is to identify the dominant terms in explicit statements of value, such as mission statements. Mission statements that articulate goals involving phenomena such as "leadership," "dominance," "innovation," "discovery," "growth," and so on can often provide strong indications of one or more of an organization's master signifiers.

Another way to discover an organization's master signifiers is to identify the dominant terms of praise and criticism that are used within the organization. Wherever there is evaluation of any sort-in personnel evaluations, in reports, in proposals, and in many other documents or utterances as well-ideals and values will be invoked, and when these ideals and values have to do with anything other than the purposes of the organization, they may well be master signifiers and hence sources of potential conflict with organizational goals. For example, if a proposed action is criticized as being "timid" rather than simply ineffectual, or praised as being "bold" rather than simply extremely productive, "bold" is functioning in this statement as a master signifier, a guiding ideal or central value of the organization.

More generally, any term that is simply invoked to explain another term or to justify a particular position, without itself being explained or justified in any way, is likely to be a master signifier. It can thus be useful to look at the first terms or last words in arguments, the terms that are simply invoked rather than explained or justified. One can identify such terms by asking, "What are the positions or consequences whose value goes without saying, the term that needs no explanation, the position that needs no justification?" One can then investigate whether any of the master signifiers seem to be implicated in any of the problems the organization is trying to deal with. For example, if an organization is suffering from imprudent expansion, it may be that a master signifier like "bold" is partly responsible, functioning as an ideal that the leaders are trying (perhaps unconsciously) to embody through their unwise expansions.

Once one has tentatively identified certain master signifiers of an organization, one can then bring them to the attention of organization members in such as way as to help them reflect upon and gain insight into the psychological, motivational forces these terms may have, particularly into the way these forces may be producing problems.

Systems, Codes, and Knowledge

The second aspect of the Symbolic order that profoundly affects our identity, anxiety, desire, and enjoyment is its systemic aspect, the relationships, especially relations of alliance and opposition, that obtain among all the different signifiers or positions that make up a code or system. In addition to its practical value, serving as means to all sorts of ends, awareness of systems-i.e., knowledge-often also functions as an end in itself: possessing knowledge of even the most impractical or trivial sort can be profoundly orienting and stabilizing for us, and rehearsing or displaying this knowledge can provide us with intense well-being and enjoyment. Threats or damage done to such knowledge can evoke intense anxiety and aggression, and desire to acquire or consolidate a body of knowledge can be a powerful motive. This is the case because identity is a function of relationships, which give identity its definition, its boundaries.

Knowledge provides such definition and boundary. Knowledge of even the most trivial or impractical sort can support our identity by giving us a sense of orientation and stability through connecting us to something other, the object of knowledge. At some level we all use knowledge--both profound and valuable knowledge and trivial and impractical knowledge--in the way it is used by the autistic Raymond, Dustin Hoffman's character in The Rainman, who possesses detailed, encyclopedic knowledge of the most insignificant sort (for example, baseball statistics) and resorts to it whenever he feels anxious or disoriented. Virtually everyone derives significant security and enjoyment from possessing, rehearsing, and displaying a certain body of knowledge, regardless of any practical value the knowledge may have. Most kinds of historical knowlege fall into this category for most people: we value and enjoy trading in knowledge of the history of sports, fashion, technology, politics, music, literature, art, and so on without putting this knowledge to any practical use. Any body of knowledge, not only theoretical but also practical--in fact, any sort of practice (since all practice is a form of knowledge), including customs, procedures, protocols, and rituals--can produce identity, anxiety, enjoyment, or desire and thus entail important consequences apart from any functional value it might have.

Since any system of knowledge or belief-and, indeed, any system of which we have knowledge-can thus constitute support for our identity and function as a source of anxiety, desire, and enjoyment, individuals and organizations often devote large amounts of time and energy to acquiring, developing, preserving, protecting, inhabiting, rehearsing, performing, and displaying knowledge (both theoretical and practical) that is not only unnecessary to, but actually interferes with, the pursuit of their goals. In organizational consulting, then, it can be useful to identify which systems are providing for these psychological needs of members of the organization and investigate whether the investment in any of these systems is counterproductive to the organization's aims. In what ways do the various cultural codes and systems (social, political, religious, scientific), professional codes, protocols, and organizations, and informal or countercultural codes, practices, or systems fulfill the narcissistic or aggressive needs of members of the organization, elicit their identification, evoke their desire, or produce anxiety in them? In what ways do these systems of knowledge coincide with, complement, or interfere with the organization's own codes and systems? Does the organization pursue or preserve certain systems of thought, procedure, or relationship primarily to serve narcissistic and aggressive needs rather than because these modes are the most productive? Some of the best examples of the pursuit, preservation, and defense of non-productive knowledge are to be found in universities and government bureaucracies. Some academic knowledge manifests little connection to any conceivable human benefits--a lack of connection that is often rationalized under the master signifier "pure research" or the slogan "knowledge for its own sake."

Another important question to ask is whether any of the organization's codes or systems contradict other codes or systems in which members are invested, and if so, how the members deal with this conflict? For example, is there conflict between mission statement and organizational practices? Or between government regulations and certain personnel practices? Or is there self-contradiction within the mission statement, within personnel practices, or within government regulations?

The Imaginary Order

The Imaginary order is the register of our visual, kinesic, and spatial experiences. At its core is the body ego, the sense (always threatened and never fully adequate) that we have of ourselves as unified, coherent, coordinated bodies. Our body ego derives its sense of either security or threat from physical, spatial, visual surroundings (e.g., landscape and weather), as well as from other bodies, animal and inanimate as well as human. In order for us to feel a secure sense of identity, our body ego must be secured in its relation both to other embodied individuals and to our physical, visual, spatial surroundings in general. Our central desire in the Imaginary register is our narcissistic desire to maintain our sense of bodily integrity and unity in face of otherness, particularly in relation to the other person, and often at the other person's expense. Any perception or situation that threatens our sense of bodily integrity or that evokes a sense of disunity is opposed by the ego in one way or another. When the physical environment is secure, other human bodies constitute the most significant threat and solace, and we respond to these bodies with display, rivalry, competition, and aggressivity, as well as with identification, in order to promote and defend our visual and spatial sense of bodily integrity.

Surrogate Bodies

We are thus continually scanning our environment both in order to find nourishment for our sense of bodily unity and coherence and to defend this unity and coherence against threats. The search for such nourishment and defense is one of the fundamental motives of spectatorship. One of the basic reasons we enjoy watching athletes perform is that viewing feats of strength, agility, coordination, and grace gives us, through identification, a heightened sense (largely, but not totally, illusory) of the unity and coherence of our own bodies. And a significant part of this heightened sense derives from the success of the athletes in defending against threats (from their opponents or from the situation) to their bodily integrity. Animal bodies often serve a similar function, as is indicated not only by people's attraction to events such as dog and livestock shows, but also by advertising's use of the technique of dissolving or morphing a graceful or powerful human body into an animal body, and vice versa.

Even inanimate bodies and shapes function as surrogate bodies for us to identify with in order to fortify our sense of self. An example is William Wordsworth's identification with the image of a castle during a time in his life when he had been shaken by the deaths of a brother and a child. "This huge Castle, standing here sublime," Wordsworth writes, "I love to see the look with which it braves,/ Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time/ The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves" (29-32). Houses, and especially cars, are obvious examples of inanimate objects that serve for many people as a kind of surrogate body and/or prosthetic device. Tools also function as prosthetic devices to enhance the body ego, as the TV sitcom Home Improvement demonstrates (while simultaneously celebrating and satirizing the fact).

Visual-Spatial Environments

We also seek to fortify our body ego through inhabiting, literally or imaginarily, physical-visual-spatial environments that stimulate experiences of bodily coherence and unity. Different landscapes, buildings, and urban spaces can produce very different effects on body egos. Soothing, balmy warmth can provide a profound sense of bodily security, as can bracing cold, both of which enhance the sensual awareness of the continuous surface--i.e., the image--of our body. But oppressive heat and bitter cold can constitute a threat to our body ego. A forest can fortify a body ego through the enclosed, protected spaces that it provides, or it can constitute a maze in which the body ego is disoriented and vulnerable to physical danger at every step. Similarly, a plain can nourish the body ego through the sense of unrestricted, unencumbered freedom of movement that its space offers, or it can threaten the body ego with its absence of structures that would serve as refuges or points of orientation or activity. Our body ego can be sustained and enhanced by the high energy movement of a crowded Fifth Avenue as well as by the serene, pastoral spaces of a Central Park. Or it can be threatened by the highly energized alien bodies of the avenue and left depressed by the relative static and passive spaces of the park.

Buildings, too, constitute spaces that are always at least slightly reassuring or alienating. Sometimes a clean, well lighted, modern functionalist place is the optimum environment for the body ego, while in other instances such a place is experienced as lifeless and alienating, and spaces that offer the body ego more intricate, textured, colorful, or monumental spaces to inhabit are preferred. The abstract spaces of sculpture, painting, and graphic design can also reinforce or threaten our body ego's sense of unity and coherence, albeit usually in a subtle way. The smooth, rounded forms of Henry More's sculptures, for example, constitute a space and a body image in which body and environment are continuous with each other rather than separate, and such a continuity is comforting to some viewers and unsettling to others. Cubism seems to offer some viewers a sense of transcendence of, or escape from, the confines of a rigid body image, while for others its fragmented and discontinuous spaces constitute a threat to the body ego.

Desire for Prestige

While threats to our body ego can come from images of fragmented bodies as well as from fragmenting or otherwise hostile environments, our body ego can also be threatened by another person who is unified either literally, in a bodily sense, or figuratively. This is because in the physical, spatial logic of the Imaginary register, no two bodies can occupy the same place at the same time. In the Imaginary register, other bodies are always rivals for the preferred place. The basic structure of Imaginary-order desire is thus rivalry or competition, and desire for recognition takes the form of desire for prestige, pride of place.

Key elements of rivalry and competition are aggressivity and display, including boasting and showing off. Such aggressivity manifests itself most clearly in brutal physical competitions such as boxing and various team sports involving physical contact. Aggressivity serves to protect the body ego's integrity, including its privileged position in the eyes of the Other. Display aims more directly at winning the Other's highest esteem, the fullest recognition, as can be seen clearly in various instances of "showing off" the body image, including beauty pagents, bodybuilding competitions, and fashion shows. But people also engage in display through various types of surrogate bodies. In fashion shows, clothing provides a kind of surrogate body to show off. Animal bodies and inanimate bodies can also serve as a surrogate body image, as is the case, for example, in dog and livestock shows, and even in automobile shows.

The Literal Body in the Organization

The body ego figures in work and organizations in a number of very basic ways. The activities, arrangements, and physical environments of our bodies at work can produce a sense of bodily well being or insecurity and thus affect how we perform our jobs and relate to our colleagues. Organizational consultants will thus want to be aware, for example, of the literal positions and movements of bodies in an organization. Are bodies sitting, standing, walking, or climbing, and what are the consequences for bodily integrity? Does the work itself require significant bodily activity? If so, how does this activity support or threaten the workers' body egos? If not, what is the effect of the absence of bodily activity on the body ego? Does lack of activity make workers more passive and lethargic, even depressed? Does it make them more aggressive, searching for an alternative mode for expressing aggression that might otherwise be gratified through bodily activity in work? Some types of physical labor-"backbreaking labor," for example-can break one's spirit as well, while other types of physical labor can enhance one's general sense of well-being by reaffirming one's bodily unity, coherence, and power. Conversely, sendentary activity, by failing to provide affirmation of bodily unity and integrity, can render one narcissistically vulnerable and thus elicit bodily or interpersonal activities that provide narcissistic reaffirmation.

It can thus be instructive to inquire whether the organization encourages or provides time and/or facilities for bodily activities (e.g., by providing a gym or sponsoring sports teams) that contribute to body ego identity or that provide for aggressive and competitive needs. If so, what consequences does such activity have for interpersonal relations, interactions, and performances on the job? Does it provide a heightened sense of bodily well being and thus contribute to a more secure sense of self, or does it simply exacerbate already existing vulnerabilities? Does such physical activity reduce anxiety and destructive competiveness on the job, or does it feed them?

Organizational consultants might also benefit from discerning what kind of visual and spatial contact organization members have with each other. Are they isolated in offices or cubicles, or do they interact frequently? If so, in what mode? Lack of adequate physical interaction can interfere with work. I recall that as a graduate student I would often find other graduate students sitting in a lounge area of the library or pacing outside the library complaining that they had gone stir crazy sitting for hours in their isolated study cubicles. I experienced this effect myself during the times I was writing my masters thesis and doctoral dissertation, to the extent that I wrote most of my thesis and dissertation in the university's snack bar and beside the swimming pool at my apartment complex.

It can also be useful to note what kinds of bodily display (such as power dressing or sexual display) are required or encouraged, and what kinds are discouraged or prohibited. How do these various instances of interaction and display serve aggressive and competitive urges? How do they satisfy narcissistic needs? What are the consequences for organization members and for the organization as a whole?

The Literal Spaces of the Organization

Organizational consultants will also benefit from observing the spaces of an organization, which can have a pronounced effect on the body ego and hence on relationships and performances within an organization. Do the various spaces contribute to a sense of bodily unity, coherence, and hence general well being by conforming to the scale, form, and functions of the human body? What kinds of opportunities, challenges, and obstacles do the spaces of an organization present to the members' bodies? Small, enclosed spaces, even when they do not elicit full-blown instances of claustrophobia, can produce anxiety or depression that is severe enough to cause people and their performances to suffer. The same is true of large spaces, which can produce agorophobia-like effects. Spaces that are too dark or too brightly lighted can also elicit feelings of oppression, depression, or anxiety, as can spaces that are too hot or too cold.

It is also important to determine what kinds of private space are available. What control do organization members have over the degree of privacy? For example, do members have private offices, and do the offices have doors and windows that can be opened and closed? Doors that cannot be closed, or windows that cannot be opened, can have a definite effect on the body ego's sense of well being and hence on one's performance and relationships.

Similarly, consultants will want to determine what kinds of common spaces, such as restrooms, lounges, and meeting rooms, and transitional spaces, such as halls, stairways, and elevators, are available. Do their size, form, and arrangement provide for easy interaction among organizational members without threatening their sense of bodily unity and coherence? Narrow halls, tiny elevators, or cramped restrooms can produce anxiety at the level of the body ego, as can mammoth halls, freight elevators, and cavernous restrooms.

Virtual and Surrogate Bodies in Organizations

Finally, the various virtual or surrogate bodies that an organization provides for its members can also have important effects on both the organization and its individual members. The organization itself is a virtual body, a body politic, and its state--unified, coherent, harmonious, or fragmented or dismembered--can function as a threat or a source of security for organization members' body egos. Buildings also function as surrogate bodies for members of an organization, much as Peele Castle did for Wordsworth: a monumental or fortress-like headquarters can contribute to the body-ego security of organizational members. Products, publications, and bodies of knowledge--including data bases--can also function as surrogate bodies for organization members. Interchanges between these virtual or surrogate bodies and the outside world resonate at the level of the body ego, and violations of or threats to any of these virtual or surrogate bodies can cause significant personal anxiety in members of an organization.

The Real Order

The Lacanian Real refers to the most profound dimension of enjoyment, desire, anxiety, and identity. This register originates in our earliest experiences of the primal, maternal object, which Lacan, following Freud, refers to as das Ding, the Thing. Our experience of this primal object is the prototype both of all subsequent enjoyment that we seek and of all that we fear and seek to avoid throughout the rest of our lives. The Real thus involves those aspects of our bodily experience that precede and/or exceed both conceptualization by the Symbolic order and imaging by the Imaginary order. As such, the Real constitutes both a promise of profound bliss beyond all gratifications of the Symbolic and Imaginary orders and a threat of disruption and even annihilation of our Symbolic- and Imaginary-order identity.

According to Lacan, we associate the lost bliss of the Real with particular parts of our bodies that provided us with profound enjoyment when we were infants but that we have subsequently been prohibited from enjoying. This prohibition is a product of the socialization of our "polymorphous perverse" infant body, whose enjoyment was not restricted in the way that the enjoyment of our adult bodies is. According to Lacan, the human subject is the product of a forced and ultimately impossible union between two incommensurable phenomena: the Symbolic, or the system of language, and the Real, or the biological body. Language is like a parasite, an alien force that infiltrates and takes control of our bodies. This basic fact is at the root of all sorts of human problems ranging from the general malaise caused by civilization to the acute physical symptoms of hysterical conversion, those instances of paralysis, anesthesia, analgesia, tics, aphasia, abasia, and astasia, which are caused not by neurological or other organic problems but by "ideas" (Freud's word)-that is, signifiers (Lacan's word)-that are incompatible with the ego. While such hysterical conversion symptoms afflict only a small minority of people, language afflicts everyone with what Lacan calls "symbolic castration," which refers to the way in which our identification with certain identity-bearing words like "man" or "woman" in effect cut off certain parts of our bodies from the desire and enjoyment that we experienced as polymorphously perverse infants.

Socialization, or "Symbolic castration," evacuates enjoyment from most parts of the polymorphous perverse body and concentrates the remaining enjoyment in certain precisely defined and delimited parts. This socialization is most pronounced in the area of gender identity. We come silently and unconsciously to assume, for example, that if one is really a "boy," there are certain things that one must be (strong, aggressive), do (act, assert oneself), feel (pride, aggression), and desire (to excel, to win, to do rather than to be done to). And we come to assume that there are certain things that one must not be (soft, passive, "like a girl"), do (cry, play with dolls), feel (fear, tenderness), and desire (to have done to). Girls are subject to a similar and arguably even more debilitating socialization.

Drives

The primary result of this identification with master signifiers is the colonization of the human organism in such as way as to evacuate enjoyment from most of its regions and restrict it to certain specific, finite zones, which function much like wildlife refuges or game preserves. These zones where enjoyment is still able to occur after socialization of the body include the oral, anal, urethral, genital, scopic, and auditory functions, which constitute the basis of the subject's drives. The form of each drive is derived from its foundation in what Lacan calls the object a, the prototypes of which are delimitable, detachable parts of one's own and/or the maternal body (such as breast, feces, urinary flow, phallus, gaze, voice, and phoneme). In adulthood, we attain what enjoyment remains accessible to us through the stimulation of these particular bodily zones or the activation of modes of interaction with otherness or particular types of objects that characterize the enjoyment we derive from these zones.

Drive gratification, that is, involves the enactment of a particular type of relation with a particular type of object or Other, and the role of the Other or object of the drive can be filled by a virtually unlimited number of entities, including not only physical objects and real people but also intangible objects and imaginary personnages. This means that a particular type of action can involve a particular type of drive gratification even if the action bears no significant relation at all to the originary bodily locus of the drive. Thus the oral drive can obtain gratification through biting, chewing, sucking, swallowing, and spitting: the satisfaction people get from eating, drinking, chewing (gum, tobacco, or food), and sucking (a drink, a cigarette, candy or part of another person's body) are all clear instances of oral drive gratification. But oral drive gratification can also be obtained through more figurative (i.e., sublimated) instances of these actions (e.g., through "biting" sarcasm) and in more general instances of devouring and incorporation (e.g., in learning), which do not directly involve the mouth, esophagus, or stomach at all.

Fantasy

While the drives provide the enjoyment that remains available to the socialized subject, fantasy constitutes a scenario for recovering the enjoyment lost to the subject through the process of bodily socialization. This lost enjoyment is represented by what Lacan calls the object a in the fundamental fantasy, which is unconscious. The fundamental fantasy gives form to the subject's desire to reclaim its (mythical) lost enjoyment, or to become whole and complete, by locating that enjoyment or wholeness in a magical, mythical object or special substance, the object a, which represents for the subject all the enjoyment and being that has been lost by virtue of the internalization of the Symbolic order and its prescriptions and proscriptions pertaining to enjoyment.

Anything that promises to overcome Symbolic castration and restore lost enjoyment--i.e., to render the subject whole and fulfilled--functions as an instance of the object a. Women frequently function as the object a for men who believe that sexual possession of the right woman--one who represents Woman for them--will provide the missing enjoyment or full being. Hetersexual women sometimes experience a similar fantasy concerning men, as do homosexuals of both sexes in relation to their partners. Other common instances of the object a include recreational drugs, jewelry, perfume, and various other commodities such as cars, power tools, or articles of clothing that one longs for or feels that one can't do without.

In addition, the fundamental fantasy involves not only the desire to possess this mythical object a, but also the passive desire to be the object a that provides ultimate enjoyment or completion for the Other. This passive fantasy can involve one's body as a whole or a specific part (phallus, vagina, breast, voice, gaze, scent, air, etc.) functioning as the object that mesmerizes the Other or drives the Other crazy with passion. People who cultivate one of these aspects of their bodies are often pursuing the fantasy of being the object a for the Other.

Being the object a in an Organization

Concerning the register of the Real, then, organizational consultants can benefit from identifying how an organization satisfies or frustrates members' drives--for example, through encouraging or prohibiting oral, anal, phallic, scopic, and auditory objects or activities of various kinds. But the two most significant general ways in which the Real figures into the psychodynamics of organizations are in the opportunities an organization provides for its members 1) to be the object a for an Other and 2) to possess the object a. Organizations provide numerous opportunities for members to be the object a. Whenever one performs an action, assumes a function, or occupies a position that is to a significant degree outside a system or Symbolic order, resisting assimilation by the system, one is functioning as an object a in relation to the system.

The object a can function in relation to the system either as something positive--i.e., as a special something that complements, supplements, and completes the system--or as something negative, something that frustrates, challenges, or thwarts the system. Either way, the person or group embodying the object a experiences a heightened sense of being. Since we have all suffered symbolic castration as a result of being socialized by the various systems to which we are subject, we find a dual gratification in positions outside the system. 1) As an object that frustrates the system, we a) gain a sort of revenge on our aggressor (the system) and b) have a basis of existence or being that is not subject to or dependent on the system. 2) As an object that the system needs or lacks, we gain recognition by the system and a certain value within the system precisely by being outside the system.

We can occupy the position of the positive object a by virtue of products that we produce, services that we provide, or other functions that we have in relation to the system or Symbolic Other. For example, insofar as members of an organization feel that the organization is producing a uniquely valuable product or providing an indispensible service, they are assuming the position of object a in relation to society as a whole. Certain occupations-farming, medicine, law enforcement, and so on-lend themselves particularly well to assuming the position of object a in relation to society as a whole, since these occupations enact functions that are essential for the preservation of life. But many other occupations can also offer one the position of object a for society as a whole. Teaching is an example. In the English department, where I teach, many faculty feel that teaching students to enjoy, appreciate, and/or understand so-called "great literature" is essential to society or to the future of civilization, even though most members of society aren't aware of this supposed fact. For faculty who have this conviction, literature itself is a realm of feelings and intuitions that largely escape Symbolic order attempts to capture, define, and control them. Such a view positions literature and its teachers as an object a in relation both to the rest of the university and to society as a whole.

This function of the positive object a can be filled not only by an entire organization or profession in relation to society as a whole but also by a department, division, or unofficial group in relation to the organization as a whole. Examples of the positive object a within an organization include the possession of a particular function, skill, or knowledge that is not part of the official organizational chart or job descriptions but that is crucial to the organization's operation. Within a university, for example, certain departments, whose status on the organizational chart is the same as that of any other department, function as an object a for the university as a whole by virtue of their research activity, which brings to the university both international recognition and big money, in the form of research grants or the licensing of manufacturing rights. Their value to the university is thus in excess of their position and function within the system, and this surplus value is precisely what constitutes them as an object a.

Individuals, like departments or divisions, can also function as a positive instance of the object a in relation to a department or the organization as a whole. Over the past decade, for example, it has not been unusual for a poorly paid untenured faculty member to become indispensible to the functioning of a department by virtue of the knowledge he or she possessed of computer hardware or software. Possession of such knowledge, which lies outside the dominant Symbolic order--i.e., the person's job description, the department's mission statement, and so on--makes the faculty member into a positive object a for the department.

The negative instance of the object a is found in various kinds of rebels, outlaws, and counterculture members. Any kind of activity that is radically disjunctive from the Symbolic order or official system of the organization can provide an individual or group with the status of a negative object a. Subversive or nonconformist individuals, as well as gangs and various countercultural groups, including subgroups such as Marxist teachers, Legal Services attorneys, and so on, can occupy the position of a negative object a for society as a whole insofar as they function as gadflies, obstructionists, subversives, or revolutionaries. Such a position can be quite gratifying. Within a university, one can see faculty, many of whom have unspectacular records as teachers and scholars and who have thus probably not gained significant narcissistic gratification within the official university culture, performing as various instances of the negative object a in relation to the official organization. I am familiar with a number of faculty, for example, who have devoted a large portion of their energies for most of their academic careers to fighting administrators at the departmental, college, and university levels. In most cases, the ostensible reason for a particular fight is little more than an excuse, and usually these individuals don't want any official powers or administrative position themselves. Rather, they derive profound gratification from obstructing the system. The profound gratification provided by this position of the negative object a--the outlaw--is indicated by the excitement with which individuals often engage in and recall their subversive activities: I have seen such faculty members literally tremble and salivate with excitement as they spoke up at a meeting to attack an administrator on proceedural grounds.

"Service departments"-i.e., departments which are not part of the central production process, do not contribute to the organization's public profile or identity, and function as the poor stepchild or the beast of burden within the organization--can also function as instances of the negative object a. They are the refuse that the organization does not recognize as part of its official, public identity but without which the organization--or society as a whole--could not function. In the university this includes departments whose main function is teaching basic level required courses (e.g., freshman English or foreign language courses) to undergraduates rather than producing significant research or preparing majors for significant professional activity. Members of such departments sometimes gain satisfaction by claiming that their work is more "real" than that of top executives or members of more prestigious departments, or by emphasizing that their function is crucial to the university or society as a whole despite the fact that it is not recognized as such.

Pursuing or Possessing the object a

In addition to being the object a that the Symbolic Other lacks but needs in order to be itself or to be whole, groups and individuals can also themselves seek the object a that promises to make them whole, fully themselves. For organizations, the object a is often sought in the form of a new product, a new venture, a new ad campaign, or a new acquisition which promises to be the thing that will put the organization over the top. This fantasy is often particularly powerful in divisions of research and development, where it typically involves the belief that one can discover, beyond the Symbolic order, a thing of ultimate value that will make life complete, whole. The paradigmatic instance of this fantasy was perhaps the alchemical quest for knowledge of how to transmute lead into gold. This fantasy is still alive and well--sometimes even in its original form of transmuting lead into gold, as in the case of the Texas A&M professor who a few years ago found a patron to fund precisely such an attempt. Other times the fantasy takes the form of building the perpetual motion machine, or its contemporary equivalent, a cold-fusion device. Less extreme, but far more common, are fantasies of medical cures--such as the fantasies the forties and fifties of finding a cure for polio (a fantasy that has largely been realized in the mode of prevention), in the sixties and seventies of a single cure for cancer, and in the eighties and nineties of a cure for AIDS. Such objects of research indicate very clearly their function as the positive object a, for like the object a, they are quite explicitly described as making healthy, whole, restoring lost life or immortality.

Non-medical research also seeks instances of the object a, although not as obviously as does medical research. Even the most ethereal academic research, that of the humanities, is in pursuit of the object a. In history, philosophy, and literary interpretation, what the scholar is often seeking is an insight or piece of the Real that has escaped the Symbolic system and that the scholar wants to recover, discover, or uncover and bring to light, with the sense (largely unconscious) that this object of discovery will contribute to the rejuvenation of culture and society.

Money, perks (such as company cars and expense accounts), certain types of offices, particular pieces of equipment-any of these, despite its Symbolic dimensions, can also function as an object a for both organizations and individuals. For organizations, a certain amount of earnings or profit, or a certain profit margin, can function as a "magic number," which possesses a value over and beyond its place in the system of numbers. It may also be useful to pay attention to instances of the object a offered by the culture at large that may be endorsed or allowed by the culture of the organization. Examples would include drugs, alcohol, tobacco, houses, cars, "trophy wives," and mistresses or prostitutes. The presence of such instances of the object a can play significant roles in the psychodynamics of an organization.

Identifying and Intervening in These Psychological Forces through Discourse Analysis

How, then, would a consultant go about identifying the crucial instances of the object a, of master signifiers, of systems of knowledge, and of visual and spatial factors that are operating within an organization? Lacan's basic strategy is to look for indications of these causes of identity, anxiety, desire, and enjoyment in people's discourse. Organizational consultants could similarly analyze the discourse of members of the organization for indications of these psychological factors. To do this, the consultant might examine such things as mission statements, annual reports, and planning documents. But it would also be useful to engage organization members in private interviews, group discussions, and focused freewriting, asking them to express themselves in a free associational manner about crucial issues or aspects of the organization, such as their thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears about the most important and the most problematic individuals, functions, and activities of the organization. Whatever the nature of the discourse, the consultant would examine all aspects of its content and form for indications of the psychological forces I have been discussing. Such indications are present not only in the thematic content of the discourse but also in its diction, syntax, and organization, and particularly in errors, problems, and ambiguities involving these elements.

The consultant then has two major options for intervention. The first option is the classical psychoanalytic strategy of helping organization members gain insight into these psychological forces and assume responsibility for them. Such a strategy will hopefully result in organization members developing alternative dispositions of these forces, such as expressing and acting on desires that had previously been repressed, confronting and working through anxieties, sublimating or displacing destructive impulses, and renouncing or suppressing destructive enjoyments.

The second option available to the consultant is to identify alternative satisfactions that the organization might develop for some of the more counterproductive modes of identity and enjoyment. In the Symbolic order, one might develop a strategy for introducing new master signifiers or new systems or knowledges. This could be done not only through the production of new discourse within the organization, but through involving organization members themselves in the production, by engaging them in self-reflective discussion and writing. In the Imaginary order, reconstructing physical spaces, restructuring the arrangement of bodies in these spaces, and providing activities and facilities to support the body ego could be useful. In the register of the Real, new opportunities to be the object a could be produced through altering mission statements or job descriptions to indicate more clearly how the products produced by an organization or the services provided by a group or individual might be seen to fulfill or complete the System. And new objects a to seek and pursue could be articulated as well, in the form of new group aims and goals as well as individual salary and perks.

These, then are some basic interventions that a consultant could pursue using a Lacanian understanding of the psychological forces operating in the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real registers. I hope that, despite its sketchiness, this account gives some indication of how a Lacanian perspective might be useful to psychoanalaytic organizational consultants.