Psychoanalytic Concepts (psychoanalytic + concept)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Masculinity and the Biographical Meanings of Management Theory: Lyndall Urwick and the Making of Scientific Management in Inter-war Britain

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 2 2001
Michael Roper
This article explores the biographical shaping of management theory. Using the British management theorist Lyndall Urwick (1891,1983) as a case study, it argues that existing understandings of the history of management studies are limited by their lack of attention to the emotional a priori of theory production. For men such as Frederick Taylor or Urwick, the work of composing management theory for a public audience was intimately connected to events and experiences in the private life. Theorizing addressed emotional dilemmas even while it strove to construct a separation between the personal and the organizational. Management theories are not only historically, socially or discursively constructed, but can be read in terms of the evidence they provide about individual subjectivity. Psychoanalytic concepts can help illuminate such relations. Theorizing can be seen as a form of play: as something which, in D.W. Winnicott's terms, takes place in the space between the psychic reality of the ,me' and the external world of the ,not me'. The ,classical' administrative theory represented by Taylor, Fayol and Urwick sought to create organizational structures which could stand apart from, and allow the management of, individual personalities. It simultaneously insisted on the status of theory as the ,not me'; that is, as a product which was not shaped by personal experience, but which constituted objective knowledge. The illusion of theory as a largely external, social product persists in much management and organization studies today. This article challenges that social determinism, first, by showing how Urwick's theories addressed issues of separation and intimacy, and second, by placing Urwick's work in the context of his relations with women. [source]


Retaliatory discourse: the politics of attack and withdrawal

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2006
Lynne Layton
Abstract Long-term and recent sociopolitical trends in the USA pull for narcissistic ways of fashioning the self and relating to others. Discourses that sustain a split between capacities for autonomy and capacities for attachment, and discourses that sustain a split between individuals and their social surround elicit omnipotent and/or submissive modes of narcissistic relating. An increasingly vulnerable and socially abandoned population, conditioned to be ashamed of its vulnerabilities and dependency, finds itself subject to discourses that pull for various splits between "us" and "them." This situation is a breeding ground for a politics of attack, or a politics of hostile withdrawal, or both. Neoconservatism fosters a politics of attack, and liberalism fosters a politics of withdrawal. Drawing on the psychoanalytic concept of "thirdness," the paper concludes that only discourses and institutions that foster interdependence, containment of vulnerability, and the bringing together of relational and autonomous capacities can counter retaliatory politics. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Using the Rorschach for exploring the concept of transitional space within the political context of the Middle East

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 1 2005
Shira Tibon
Abstract The paper presents an application of a new Rorschach index, the Reality,Fantasy Scale (RFS) for evaluating the extent to which educated Israeli Jews and Arabs manifest a similar adaptive and functional ability in preserving psychic transitional space. The RFS is a psychodynamic oriented diagnostic tool, based on Exner's (1993) Comprehensive System for scoring and interpreting the Rorschach, and designed to operationalize Winnicott's (1971) concept of potential space. The scale is based on a paradigm that conceptualizes the Rorschach task as inviting the subject to enter the intermediate transitional space between inner and outer reality. The RFS ranges from ,5 to +5, and a score of zero indicates adaptive and functional use of potential space. The results point to a basic similarity between two groups of Jewish (n = 41) and Arab (n = 14) non-patients both using adaptively inner space between reality and fantasy. These results are discussed in terms of current psychoanalytic thought of relationality, political psychology research, cross-cultural personality assessment, and the empirical study of psychoanalytic concepts. Copyright © 2005 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source]


Living with an internal other: an extended review of psychoanalysis, identity and ideology

PSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 1 2005
Shawn Tower
Abstract An extended review ofPsychoanalysis, Identity, and Ideology: Critical Essays on the Israel/Palestine Case(Bunzl and Beit-Hallahmi, 2002), focusing in particular on Brunner's chapter, which brings ,home' enemy images of the Other, and using psychoanalytic concepts (specifically ,internal cohabitation') which call for the recognition of an Other within. Copyright © 2005 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source]


What is conceptual research in psychoanalysis?,

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 5 2006
Research Subcommittee for Conceptual Research of the International Psychoanalytical Association
The development of psychoanalysis as a science and clinical practice has always relied heavily on various forms of conceptual research. Thus, conceptual research has clarifi ed, formulated and reformulated psychoanalytic concepts permitting to better shape the fi ndings emerging in the clinical setting. By enhancing clarity and explicitness in concept usage it has facilitated the integration of existing psychoanalytic thinking as well as the development of new ways of looking at clinical and extraclinical data. Moreover, it has offered conceptual bridges to neighbouring disciplines particularly interested in psychoanalysis, e.g. philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, history of art and literature, and more recently cognitive science/neuroscience. In the present phase of psychoanalytic pluralism, of worldwide scientifi c communication among psychoanalysts irrespective of language differences and furthermore of an intensifying dialogue with other disciplines, the relevance of conceptual research is steadily increasing. Yet, it still often seems insuffi ciently clear how conceptual research can be differentiated from clinical and empirical research in psychoanalysis. Therefore, the Subcommittee for Conceptual Research of the IPA presents some of its considerations on the similarities and the differences between various forms of clinical and extraclinical research, their specifi c aims, quality criteria and thus their specifi c chances as well as their specifi c limitations in this paper. Examples taken from six issues of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 2002-3 serve as illustrations for seven different subtypes of conceptual research. [source]