| The thesis is an effort to develop a theoretically sophisticated framework for interpreting the personality dynamics of large organizations. While psychoanalysis has hitherto been used almost exclusively for understanding individual and small group dynamics, it is the contention of this thesis that it will prove equally fruitful for understanding the functioning of large scale organizations. The aim of the thesis is, therefore, to produce and explicate both a framework for analysis and a specific set of guidelines and procedures for the interpretation of "process" and genetic data about organizational personality.; Non-psychoanalytic approaches to organizational assessment and intervention were found wanting (a) because they treated organizations as either passive or static "natural systems" rather than subjects of action, and/or (b) because they treated individual members of organizations as the sole loci of psychological life, neglecting the organization as a whole. Existing psychoanalytic approaches were found to be extremely valuable, and to suggest the most fruitful basis for further development of a holistic organizational psychology. It was argued that a synthesis was required between the group dynamics work of W. R. Bion, E. J. Miller, A. K. Rice and some other Tavistock Institute members and the holistic organizational diagnosis model of Harry Levinson. The Tavistock work was found valuable in its analysis of the psychodynamic basis of commitment to groups and organizations, the nature of regression in social contexts and the functioning of underlying psychical structures behind manifest task organization. The present thesis builds on this work, in particular, by further developing its theoretical basis in relation to the work of Levinson, and the work of Leopold Bellak, Marvin Hurvich, and Helen K. Gediman.; The thesis, thus, attempts to develop the general basis in psychoanalytic theory for the treatment of the organization as an individual. By drawing on the work of Bellak, Hurvitch and Gediman, the thesis specifies the ego-functions which are the key indicators of organizational and individual health. The thesis, therefore, attempts to translate Bellak's conceptualizations of ego-functions into terms appropriate to organizational analysis.; Finally, the thesis presents a model for diagnostic organizational analysis. This model includes a treatment of the relationship between consultant and organization, suggesting important similarities between it and the analyst/patient relationship. |
