Your Company on the Couch
Reflecting on leadership in an article in the Financial Times, Larry Gould is a psychoanalyst and long-standing colleague of the Tavistock Institute.
Mr Gould describes the principles of the work and teachings of Wilfred Bion upon which his work is based. Charles Wallace, the author of the article, states “Bion’s work became a speciality of the Tavistock Institute”.
Mr Gould's psychoanalytical work, like Bion's teaching, goes beyond conscious behaviour, the preserve of most psychologists, to try to overcome unconscious problems, such as bringing your earliest relationships with your parents into the workplace.
Bion understood the various patterns of feelings, behaviour and relationships that can take place in group situations, says Mr Gould. For example, employees might have an unconscious anxiety about survival, such as who is going to keep their job in a downsizing or who gets a salary rise.
"The advantage of the psychoanalytic lens is that it adds a critical dimension to understanding behaviours which cannot be accounted for by other theories," Mr Gould says.
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