10:15am Sunday 11 July 2021
PP21 : Veronica Azua: Are you one of us? Am I worth to be one of them? An ‘elite identity’ culture that excludes.
Professional services firms, historically, have been associated with a very strong brand as an employer, attracting what is perceived by many as ‘very capable people’, privately educated and recruited from top universities. Traditionally, these firms’ culture are well-known for being highly hierarchical, expectations of working really hard to the highest standards, attracting ‘driven and ambitious’ individuals and charging expensive daily consulting rates. Equally, for many individuals, (predominantly those with high conscientiousness traits), these firms have been a prestigious, powerful and attractive place to work for, where they feel they fit it. read more (PDF)
PP22 : Michael Mandahl: Dementors in our time and the hope of deactivating the defense of hopelessness
The paper is an examination of societal anxiety dynamics. It argues that today, the lost faith in political ability has stimulated fear and anxiety and locked many of us in the defense of hopelessness against guilt. The paper explores if the position of hopelessness blocks our contact with a social conscience aspect of the superego and argues that this can be a
contributing factor in the ongoing polarization of everything in the world.
The paper uses the Dementor concept developed by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter world where Dementors are dynamic monsters that thrive on human fears and renders humans hopeless without access to their abilities. read more (PDF)
PP23 : Mark Argent: The stability of walls, and leaders “getting away with it”
This paper suggests that something big was going on in the unconscious process of Europe across the violence of the Great War, the Russian Revolution and the Second World War which found a way to stabilise itself in the binary split of East and West across the Iron Curtain and, in particular, the Berlin Wall. “Islamic terrorism” can be seen as a large piece of projective identification in which the West has tried to create the stable enemy it needs. read more (PDF)
PP24 : Voytek Chelkowski: Finding safety within uncertainty – curiosity and neutrality in rising above defensive walls
This interactive workshop will draw on findings and experiences from the 17th European Meeting of International Society for Psychoanalytic Studies of Organisations, with the theme ‘Between Neutrality and Engagement’, as well as from subsequent research on the psychodynamics of neutrality in the humanitarian context of the International Committee of the Red Cross and, a workshop on neutrality at the OPUS Annual Conference 2019. Drawing on concepts of object relations and organizational role analysis in combination with participants’ reflections and interactions, we will explore both challenges as well as opportunities for neutrality as a means to rising above the internal walls which keep us and our clients from engaging with uncertainty and division within our societal, organizational and personal contexts. read more (PDF)
PP25 : Giernalczyk, Albrecht & Feuerstein: Between anxiety and passion – emotions in the New Work context
New work approaches (e.g. sociocracy, agile working methods, self-organisation and flexibilisation of work place, working time & task) promise the individual that walls of hierarchy and control will be torn down and new liberties will emerge. The individual often associates this with more self-determination, more opportunities for experimentation and positive emotions, such as self-efficacy, joy at work, sense of coherence, appreciation and trust.
This paper explores the conditions that allow liberation from hierarchy walls through New Work and the internal and external factors that can complicate liberation. read more (PDF)