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Anxiety, greed and narcissism:
Lou McIntyre Abstract
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According to Laplanche & Pontalis’s (1973) summary of Freud’s approach to technique, analysts must be neutral in respect of religious, ethical and social values - that is to say, they must not direct the treatment according to some ideal, and should abstain from counselling the patient. They must be neutral, too, as regards manifestations of transference (that is, "do not play the patient’s game"); finally they must be neutral towards the discourse of the patient: in other words, they must not, a priori, lend a special ear to particular parts of this discourse, or read particular meanings into it, according to their preconceptions. Freud saw neutrality as a qualification not of the actual analyst but of his/her function; it was an ideal to be aimed at rather than an absolute injunction. In other words, in Freud’s view neutrality is a discipline and a "stance" rather than a position that reflects the person’s own world view. Moreover, it is a posture to which one aspires and never quite reaches, rather than a "natural state" that is intuitively easy to adopt. Mawson (1994) writes that the sense of security in a work group is greatly encouraged by the consultant’s restraint from judging, blaming, ‘knowing’ too much too soon, or seeming to believe in quick solutions. He argues that the group often depends upon the consultant’s ability to stand up for the value of struggling for understanding, rather than rushing into the solving of concrete problems to get rid of the uncomfortable feelings. Restraint from judgement is a particular conceptualisation of the consultant’s role and may amount to approximately the same as "neutrality". This paper explores "neutrality" as a position where consultants may process internal and external pressures to collude. Ideally in this position they can think about an organisation’s difficulties and how to work in the most helpful ways with staff. This position, however, is not easily held, as the consultant experiences strong pressures to collude with the organisation or part of it. The paper describes psychodynamic parallels with neutrality which have implications for understanding the constant negotiation of boundaries in the relationship between consultant and client. The tasks involved in negotiating the consultancy relationship are accompanied by fears, confusion, doubts and uncertainties in both parties (Neumann, 1994). It is sometimes difficult to determine what behaviours are legitimate "joining" the sponsor and winning/keeping a contract and what are "selling out" and losing one’s power to consult effectively. These ambiguities alone can explain difficult beginnings and confrontations. In the jockeying process, both client and consultant are prone to mobilise various psychological forces and processes in order to defend themselves against unwelcome anxiety. Even when the negotiation stage is complete, and consultants enter an organisation to work on a change project, they may still experience pressures to join with their clients in ways that adversely affect the outcome of their work. Organisations may commission consultants to assist them to change, whilst paradoxically defending against such changes by various means. When these means skew the boundary with the consultant, they are referred to in the paper as external pressures on neutrality. Consultants also bring their own conscious and unconscious desires to the work which may equally skew their judgement about what is to be done. These desires are referred to in the paper as internal pressures on neutrality. Neutrality is not an ‘all or nothing’ process. To be commissioned for a job in the first place, consultants need to build relationships with the referring person. To operate successfully thereafter, they need to have a relationship with the client group. Consultants inevitably "collude" to some degree as they involve themselves in a constant negotiation process with the sponsor and the group. The paper investigates the ill-marked border - a point where "joining" becomes "collusion", and neutrality suffers. Unrecognised forces from the sponsor, the group, or from the consultant can erode boundaries, leach clarity of purpose, and imperil the work. By means of several case examples, the paper will describe how the invitations coming from external and internal sources produce dilemmas for the consultant. These illustrations highlight three sources of subversion: anxiety, greed and narcissism.
Anxiety, greed and narcissism:
External pressures to join with the client
The leadership program was two-days, to be repeated many times. Clarissa had been taken to the equivalent of a high mountain and promised, in consulting terms, that she could be Lord of all she surveyed, if she, in turn would guarantee outcomes. It was assumed by the company that in two days participants could get a rich meal and take away the rest in a doggy bag. Clarissa misses out. What is the organisation looking for? Is it "greedy", or reasonable, to want take-home bags from an expensive program? Is Clarissa being too pure for not promising them - or indeed anything much? Organisational Sponsors may have a mixed agenda when hiring a consultant; they may not be aware of their ambivalent feelings, however, until the consultant starts to ask questions that challenge the status quo. It is not unusual for the sponsor to want a desirable outcome to the work with the least disturbance to the organisation. This desire, though understandable, will create a particular dynamic for the consultant to be "obligated" and to collude with the sponsor’s wish not to disturb the status quo ("Agree with me, for I am paying"). This tension may then be manifested in a willingness by the consultant to express views that fit in with the client’s world-view - they are caught up in ordinary desires to please, and fear economic loss. Clarissa was allowed to go on with her forty day fast.
Ordinary problems of consultancy, such as not wanting to make trouble or fear of economic loss are compounded when the Sponsor in person has "narcissistic" tendencies. The Consultant may be expected to bolster the Sponsor’s unusual need for mirroring of her grandiose self image. Not to collude in admiring Sarah is to risk her fragile view of herself but to go along with that view, on the other hand, can imperil the necessary neutrality that is needed to work well. When Con felt the pressure to collude with Sarah’s image of herself - he was losing sense of his independence in that he did not disagree with, or challenge, anything she said.
Like Clarissa and Con, Claudia believes that a potential benefit of consultants is their skilled refusal to become caught up in the dynamics of the organisation; this allows them to keep an outsider’s world view and to see things from a different perspective to that of their clients. However, once a consultant is exposed to the pushes and pulls of organisational dynamics, it is sometimes difficult to maintain this perspective. To avoid these pushes and pulls a consultant can take a stance of "strategic neutrality". How can Claudia do this? Claudia doesn’t much like the sound of a "cleansing and exfoliating" consultancy, and thinks that the brief is skewed. However, as I have mentioned, Claudia needs work. A position of "strategic neutrality" involves acting as if the outcome of a consultancy, the survival of the organisation, the importance of one idea, person or group over another, the virtue of one group and the evil of another, were matters of equal value and interest to the consultant. Claudia wants to adopt a stance of strategic neutrality, Sally wants her to cleanse and exfoliate the girls - after all, is Claudia not one of them - and aren’t they all working for women? Claudia tries to act as if all elements, including "destructive" elements, are but part of circular interactions between organisation members, no part necessarily more interesting, horrific, "causative" or significant than another. "Strategic Neutrality" is a stance adopted by consultants to achieve outcomes that are positive for the client. Claudia assumes that the client will have the "most room to move" if she does not appear to impose or even adopt one position as being better than another. This type of work is familiar in analytic circles where it is quite accepted that the analyst does not react in horror or praise at the patient’s utterances and intentions. In the classical psychoanalytic model, the analytic relationship is essentially frustrating, and therein lies its leverage for meaningful change (Mitchell, 1993 p.176). The most inclusive role requirement is that of "abstinence" (Newton, 1971). The analyst’s role in this model is clear: do not gratify. The wished-for relationship or the wished-for endorsement of a position is denied in the transference. Sally "demands" something from Claudia, but what she demands may not be what the group needs. The wished-for relationship is "sister"; the wished for endorsement of a position is "Agree with us that Max and management is at fault". However, it is not possible for Claudia to frustrate her client in the same way as an analyst does. Remember Clarissa! If Sally is frustrated to this degree, then Claudia won’t even get to begin the job. Claudia has to gratify and not gratify at the same time. If Claudia goes with Sally’s brief, to what extent is she "selling out" because of greed, and to what extent is it the necessary management of the client so that she can even begin to work? Should she at this stage challenge the notion of "us girls", and should she say "I don’t do cleansing and exfoliating". If Claudia joins forces with Sally’s hypothesis about what is wrong or who is good and who is bad (eg, Max and the "system"), or what a solution might be ("unfettered autonomy" and "more funding"), then she simply adds one more person to the existing dynamic which has already proved not to be useful.
Consultants are usually called in by a client system laboring under a single construction of reality (that is, they are stuck in a particular way of thinking and acting) which has not been adequate to help them resolve their difficulty. The neutral stance may be helpful to the consultant in his/her endeavour to establish different constructions of reality or to open up other ways of working for the client. Claudia’s desire to have Max in the session is so that more of the system is represented and that the "girls’" views become less linear.
She wants to help her client generate different alternatives, to see that there are many other doors opening to other possibilities.
Much of the important data about problems in organisations is not presented verbally or in an ordered fashion. It is part of the consultant’s role to observe "what is going on" in the organisation by interacting with its members. Claudia had done so, and she had absorbed and experienced the dynamics of Sally’s organisation. These experiences and feelings may be valid data about the organisation, but as Claudia was painfully aware, can also be confusing to the recipient. Sally’s team, by blaming Max, had the benefit of reducing the immediate pain of taking responsibility for their future but it carried the price of their feeling helpless about improving their situation.
Claudia’s guilty and inadequate feelings may have been due to a projective identification from Sally, who couldn’t take away the group’s anxieties, but wanted to. When working with people, the inner desire "magically" and omnipotently to solve all their problems can be very strong; the wish to take away the uncertainty and pain sometimes unbearably strong (Hood & Noonan, 1984; Shapiro & Carr, 1991). The temptation towards omnipotence is a way of coping with life’s anxieties - despite all her training, in the countertransference Claudia wanted to "save" Sally, take away her uncertainty and pain as much as Sally wanted omnipotently to take away the unit’s uncertainty and pain. I have stressed so far the external pressures on the consultant to join, in an unhelpful way, the client’s story. Life, however is rarely as clear-cut as to allow such an absolute distinction. Claudia was not without her internal pressures which resonated to the external pressures. The consultant’s good feelings about herself are embedded in the service she offers - her process, her techniques, her methodology. Her hopes for her clients are deeply entangled with her own sense of herself, her worth, what she offers. By denying Sally’s wish to relieve the anxiety of the group by splitting the group and Max, by resisting Sally’s invitation to collude as "sisters" against the male establishment, and by abstaining from Sally’s deeply hidden wish to become the Messiah, Claudia’s own narcissism is strangely wounded. In exploring the complexities of her countertransference, her personal stake in the proceedings emerged more clearly. Her hopes for her client was inextricably bound up with her hopes for herself. I want to move now to internal pressures to join with the client. Internal pressures to join
Instead of sticking to a stance of "strategic neutrality", Charles had joined the system and behaved as if he were a group member. In his anxiety, which perhaps was echoing theirs, he had moved away from his consultant role. By joining a part of the system, he may well have expanded the split between the two services, or have at least done nothing to anneal it. By giving in to his feelings of helplessness in such cases, and by "acting out", he unwittingly could have encouraged or modelled the very behaviour that the adolescent client-group exhibited, and that the services which attempted to help them also exhibited. Yet, unlike Claudia who experienced mostly external pressures on her neutrality, Charles’s pressures came mostly from "inside". When a consultant loses her brief or her role, it is not always on account of demands, psychological or otherwise, from the client. When consultants create a holding environment, they serve as a "container" (Bion, 1961) where they absorb and manage potentially damaging stimuli, protecting clients from feeling overwhelmed by internal affect or external disruptions. That is, they contain anxiety - their own and that of their client’s - rather than leaking it or spilling it or joining it. Consultants undermine holding environments, as Charles did in this case, when they intrude on or abandon those they purport to help. They step away from their roles either completely or by substituting another role, for example, that of system member. The tasks involved in negotiating the consultancy relationship are accompanied by fears, confusion, doubts and uncertainties in both parties (Neumann, 1994). It is sometimes difficult to determine what behaviours are legitimate "joining" the sponsor and winning/keeping a contract and what are "selling out" and losing one’s power to consult effectively. These ambiguities alone can explain difficult beginnings and confrontations. In the jockeying process, both client and consultant are prone to mobilise various psychological forces and processes in order to defend themselves against unwelcome anxiety. In the illustrations I have given, only Claudia prevailed and then only by the skin of her teeth. Consultants are involved in an ongoing balancing act, the simultaneous joining with and yet remaining apart from system members and their dynamics. "Sitting with anxiety" is one of their disciplines, wrestling with their temptation to omnipotence is one of the hurdles, and overcoming the drive to gratify their client’s demands and hence fulfil their own sense of self-worth is a never-ending dilemma. The question is, how to resist the urge to fill the space with telling, teaching, content expertise, or anything to relieve the tension. Sometimes the task is to stay with "not knowing", this includes not knowing about the "other’s" experience, the "answer" to their difficulties, or a pre-determined outcome. REFERENCES:
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