The Leader on the Couch E-Book

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 590

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Despite the proven benefits of emotional intelligence, organizational life has typically been hostile to the inner world of feeling. Rationality is deemed superior to feeling, which can contaminate judgment. But without feeling there is no passion, and no action. This book sets out to change people and organizations for the better, by revealing the 'dark side' of leadership behaviour and its impact on performance. Tapping into the startling parallels between the journey to emotional intelligence, the process of psychoanalysis, the practice of leadership coaching and the Zen journey to enlightenment, renowned thinker Manfred Kets de Vries helps executives, consultants, and coaches to peel back the layers of self-deception and reveal how inner personality - largely hard-wired since early childhood - affects the way they lead and manage others.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PREFACE

Acknowledgments

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION: THE CLINICAL PARADIGM

GIVING THE UNCONSCIOUS ITS DUE

TAPPING INTO PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES AND TECHNIQUES

PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE CLINICAL PARADIGM

THE INNER THEATER

MOTIVATIONAL NEED SYSTEMS

CORE CONFLICTUAL RELATIONSHIP THEMES

USING THE CLINICAL PARADIGM TO REWRITE DYSFUNCTIONAL SCRIPTS

REFERENCES

PART ONE - ENTERING THE INNER THEATER OF LEADERS

CHAPTER 2 - THE NARCISSISTIC LEADER: MYTH AND REALITY

BACK TO THE FUTURE

TWO MODERN MYTHS: HEALTHY NEGLECT AND TOUGH LOVE

NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDERS

ANOTHER FINE MESSIER

LOST IN SPACE: INTRODUCING THE T-WORD

DOWNSIZING THE NARCISSIST

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 3 - A PARADE OF PERSONALITIES

A QUESTION OF CHARACTER

ASSESSING LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS

THE DRAMATIC DISPOSITION

THE DRAMATIC INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

THE CONTROLLING DISPOSITION

THE CONTROLLING INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

THE DEPENDENT DISPOSITION

THE DEPENDENT INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

THE SELF-DEFEATING DISPOSITION

THE SELF-DEFEATING INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 4 - LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS: MOVING AWAY FROM PEOPLE

THE DETACHED DISPOSITION

THE DETACHED INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

THE DEPRESSIVE DISPOSITION

DEPRESSIVES WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 5 - LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS: MOVING AGAINST PEOPLE

THE ABRASIVE DISPOSITION

ABRASIVES WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

THE PARANOID DISPOSITION

THE PARANOID DISPOSITION WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

THE NEGATIVISTIC DISPOSITION

THE NEGATIVISTIC INDIVIDUAL WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

THE ANTISOCIAL DISPOSITION

ANTISOCIALS WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

PROTOTYPES AND BEYOND

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 6 - ELATION AND ITS VICISSITUDES

THE GIFT AND CURSE OF CHARISMA

THE SIRENS OF HYPOMANIA

SURVIVING THE ″MANIAC″

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 7 - THE IMPOSTOR SYNDROME: THE SHADOW SIDE OF SUCCESS

BEING A FRAUD VERSUS FEELING FRAUDULENT

THE FEAR OF SUCCESS

THE DREAD OF NOT LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONS

INFECTING THE ORGANIZATION

A SEARCH FOR ORIGINS

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

REFERENCES

PART TWO - CHANGING MINDSETS

CHAPTER 8 - CAN LEADERS CHANGE? YES, BUT ONLY IF THEY WANT TO

WHY RIDE A DEAD HORSE?

CHANGE AND THE TRIANGLE OF MENTAL LIFE

HITTING YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL

THE CEO “RECYCLING” SEMINAR

LOOKING IN ON ″THE CHALLENGE OF LEADERSHIP″

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 9 - TAKING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

OWNING YOUR OWN LIFE

CHALLENGE 1: PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY

CASE STUDY

CATALYSTS FOR CHANGE

CHALLENGE 2 : IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM

MAJOR THEMES FOR EXECUTIVES

THE TRIANGLE OF CONFLICT

CHALLENGE 3 : UNHOOKING ″FALSE CONNECTIONS″

LINKING THE PAST WITH THE PRESENT

CHALLENGE 4: CREATING A HOLDING ENVIRONMENT

CHALLENGE 5: ACTIVELY WORKING ON THE PROBLEM

RESTRUCTURING THE INNER THEATER

KEEPING ON TRACK

CHALLENGE 6: CONSOLIDATING THE CHANGE

MAKING THE BEST OF A POOR HAND OF CARDS

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 10 - COACH OR COUCH, ANYBODY?

WHO ARE THE CLIENTS?

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP COACHING?

SHORT-TERM PSYCHOTHERAPY VERSUS LEADERSHIP COACHING

THE COACHING PARADE

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF COACHING: WHY AND HOW

WHAT MAKES FOR COACHING SUCCESS?

THE VICISSITUDES OF LEADERSHIP COACHING

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 11 - GROUP LEADERSHIP COACHING

A CASE IN POINT

GETTING STARTED

GATHERING DATA

GROUP LEADERSHIP COACHING DYNAMICS

CREATING HIGH-EQ TEAMS

MAKING GROUP LEADERSHIP COACHING WORK IN EXECUTIVE TEAMS

THE ROLE OF COMMITMENT AND FOLLOW-UP

THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING

THE ROLE OF TRUST

REFERENCES

PART THREE - UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS

CHAPTER 12 - THE UNCONSCIOUS LIFE OF GROUPS AND ORGANIZATIONS

BASIC GROUP ASSUMPTIONS

THE ORGANIZATIONAL IDEAL

NEUROTIC ORGANIZATIONS

ORGANIZATIONAL ARCHETYPES

STRENGTHS OF EACH STYLE

PLACING LEADERS ON THE COUCH

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 13 - UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF ORGANIZATIONS

CLINICAL ORGANIZATIONAL INTERVENTIONS

FOCAL AREAS OF INTERVENTION

THE PRICKLY CEO

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: THE STRATEC COLLUSION

CONSULTING WITH THE THIRD EAR

CONNECTING WITH A CLINICALLY INFORMED CONSULTANT

STAYING IN FOR THE LONG HAUL

EMULATING SHERLOCK HOLMES

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 14 - CONCLUSION: CREATING ″AUTHENTIZOTIC″ ORGANIZATIONS

TRANSCENDING THE LEADERSHIP CRISIS

TRUE SELF VERSUS FALSE SELF

AUTHENTICITY: BEYOND THE GULAG ORGANIZATION

REFERENCES

INDEX

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To Alicia, A great bearer of transitional space

PREFACE

There are . . . things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.

—Carl G. Jung

“Know thyself?” If I knew myself, I’d run away.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it’s dark.

—Zen proverb

There’s a Zen story about a martial arts student who went to his teacher and said, “I have committed myself to master your martial system. How long will it take me to succeed?” The teacher’s response was, “Ten years.” Impatiently, the student countered, “But that’s far too slow. I want to succeed much sooner. I’ll work very hard. I’ll dedicate myself to practicing however many hours it takes each day. How long will mastery take when I make that kind of effort?” The teacher thought for a moment, and then replied, “Twenty years.”

Obviously, the teacher is trying to tell the student that he needs to learn patience before proceeding any further. He’s saying, Go slowly to go fast! Certain kinds of learning can’t be rushed; they have to be approached one step at a time. This is particularly true of becoming more emotionally attuned. To acquire this kind of knowledge, there are two secrets. The first is to have patience; the second is to be patient! Acquiring higher emotional intelligence—that is, gaining a better understanding of the psychodynamics of human behavior—is never instantaneous. Becoming more psychologically minded requires not only time, but also persistence. Patience and persistence can move mountains. They are the keys to becoming more emotionally astute.

What differentiates the great companies of this world from the merely average ones is the level of emotional intelligence (EQ) among their employees. In our post-industrial knowledge-based society, companies populated with high-EQ personnel have the best shot at creativity and innovation. In such companies, statements like “People are our greatest asset” and “Our capital leaves the workplace every evening” are more than empty slogans; they are credos with real meaning. Executives who run such companies value their people and see them as much more than interchangeable commodities. Realizing that considerable corporate knowledge and wisdom reside in the gray matter of their employees, they view the selection, development, and retention of talent as a source of competitive advantage, they consider leadership development a core competence, and they make a valiant effort to keep their employees motivated.

I have devoted my working life to helping people create emotionally intelligent organizations. I have taken many different routes to make this dream a reality. As a management professor, consultant, leadership coach, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst, I have had many corporate leaders “on the couch,” literally and figuratively. My in-depth interactions with these executives have given me a rare glimpse into the inner world of leaders, revealing the interplay of personality and environment and unveiling the process of personal and organizational change.

In taking this road less traveled, I have noted a clear and compelling connection between the personal objectives of the organization’s power holders and the objectives of the organization itself. The intrapsychic themes of the CEO often dictate the structure or priorities of the organization. This linkage comes about because we are what we think. In other words, all that we are arises with our thoughts; with our thoughts, we make our world. Perception carries so much weight that objectivity is nothing more than masked subjectivity. Thus many management theories that explain how people make decisions in organizations are inadequate oversimplifications. In fact, the apparently rational explanations for certain decisions often turn out to be fiction, rationalizations made after the fact to explain how intrapsychic themes were translated into external reality.

In my role as a management consultant to executive boards, I have often been quite successful at creating high-performance teams and high-performance organizations. When I began to work with executive boards, however, I discovered that many executive teams are what I call “unnatural acts.” Though they come together to make serious decisions affecting the future of the organization and its people, they engage in ritualistic activities that center on political gamesmanship and posturing rather than substance. The “barons” of the various business entities—the heads of marketing and new-product development, for example—are so busy defending their respective fiefdoms that true conflict resolution doesn’t occur. Other, more intangible factors seem to take over as executives circle around “undiscussables.” While a six hundred pound gorilla sits on the table, smelling up the place, the senior executive group squanders an incredible amount of energy ignoring its presence. Far too often, it has to be “high noon” (or beyond) before corporate leaders are prepared to deal with the real issues. In many instances, as an outside consultant, I have taken it upon myself to nudge an executive team to grapple with their own particular undiscussables. In taking on that role, I have come to understand the meaning of the saying, “Fish start to smell from the head.”

As in my consultant work, in my role as an educator I have gone to great lengths to create more emotionally intelligent students. I have made this effort not only in working with MBAs but also in working with executives. The two transformational programs that I run at INSEAD, “The Challenge of Leadership: Creating Reflective Leaders” and “Consulting and Coaching for Change,” have been instrumental in accomplishing these goals. In particular, the top management program “The Challenge of Leadership” has been a great human “laboratory,” encouraging and promoting mindset change among participants.

I have a dream as an educator dedicated to helping people engage in transformational journeys. This dream goes as follows: If I can increase the EQ level of the approximately twenty people who usually are enrolled in this program at any one time, perhaps I can have a positive effect on the 100,000 or more people for whom they are responsible. I would like to think that I can help make their organizations more effective and more humane. Too many organizations possess “gulag” qualities that prevent the human spirit from self-actualizing.

This book is a manifesto espousing my belief, and that of my colleagues at the INSEAD Global Leadership Center, in high-EQ organizations. It is a natural sequence to a previous book of mine: The Leadership Mystique. The difference is that this new book, in introducing the clinical approach to individual and organizational intervention, is more conceptual. It takes a much deeper look at personality prototypes; it introduces a well-tried methodology to help executives change behavior patterns; it deals with leadership coaching; it concerns team building; and it explores system-wide change strategies in organizations.

Like The Leadership Mystique, Leaders on the Couch is a manifesto in favor of organizations where people are authentic and feel truly alive, where they understand what they’re doing and why, and what the consequences will be. It’s a manifesto arguing for more reflective, emotionally intelligent executives, and it offers valuable tools toward that end: for example, it gives executives a new lens through which to look at people and concepts—a lens that makes unusual behavior (in self and others) more understandable. Far too many executives engage in “manic” behavior, running and doing all the time, forgetting why they go to work each day. Uncertain what they want, they’re nonetheless willing to kill themselves to get it. While it may be true that the really idle person doesn’t get anywhere, the perpetually busy person has the same problem. My hope is that this book will be helpful to executives, consultants, and leadership coaches, teaching them to peel back the layers of self-deception to reveal how inner personality—largely hard-wired since early childhood—affects the way we lead and manage others.

For many years I have been intrigued by Zen stories. Actually, acquiring emotional intelligence and becoming a Zen master are learning processes that have many aspects in common. Both Zen and psychoanalysis are disciplines of attention, conferring on successful adherents a profound change in mindset. Both disciplines aim for self-discovery, self-understanding, and the possession of peace with oneself. Psychoanalysis explores the unconscious meanings, desires, and feelings of individuals with the goal of making them feel more creative and alive. The purpose of Zen is to make people fully aware of life as it’s actually lived. Zen deals with the capacity to awaken the mind and clarify consciousness. Just as psychological insights can be attained by everyone who makes the effort, Zen teaches that everyone can acquire the Buddha-nature; in other words, everyone has the potential to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Because of ignorance, however, most of us make too little use of this potential.

Disciples of Zen argue that people’s innate capacity to become more insightful about themselves and the world around them is best awakened not just by the study of scriptures, the doing of good deeds, the practice of rites and ceremonies, and the worship of images, but also by a sudden breaking through of the boundaries of common, everyday, logical thought. People have to learn how to cope with paradoxical situations to arrive at a new understanding. To quote Pablo Picasso, “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” Thus the paradoxical statements—the riddles, if you will—embedded in koans (Zen stories inaccessible to rational understanding) help Zen disciples progress on the spiritual journey toward enlightenment. Many disciples find the journey more rewarding when undertaken with the help of a master. This method of assisted self-discovery is very similar to the dynamics of leadership coaching, psychoanalysis, or psychotherapy. In these methodologies, the psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, or leadership coach takes on the role of “master,” offering spiritual guidance. Like the quest for greater EQ, the Zen form of enlightenment can’t be forced; rather, it’s a form of slow and silent illumination. And practitioners of Zen and psychoanalysis are never completely satisfied with the results of their approach. The journey is always indeterminate.

Tapping into the parallels between the process of acquiring emotional intelligence and the journey toward spiritual enlightenment, I have chosen to begin each of the chapters of this book with a Zen story. Allow the paradox of each koan to help you discern the leadership message presented in each chapter. As you attempt to move toward increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence, this book will serve as your “master.”

Many of these chapters started as articles and working papers in which I explored the clinical orientation to organizational analysis. Many of the papers were first presented to executives taking the “Challenge of Leadership” seminar. This intensive executive program has been a good testing ground for my ideas. Many of the papers had their origin in knotty, paradoxical questions from executives to which I couldn’t give an immediate answer—questions that haunted me until I arrived at what seemed like plausible answers. These original papers have been reworked and integrated to help the reader better understand the advantages of using the clinical perspective for the purpose of organizational sense-making.

The main theme of this book, weaving through all the pages, is changing people and organizations. The text starts with an introduction describing the clinical approach to organizational analysis. The body of the book then follows, divided into three parts.

Part One (“Entering the Inner Theater of Leaders”) describes various personality prototypes that can be found in the workplace and focuses on personality functioning and its consequences in organizational life. To the extent that executives understand why people do what they do, how the shadow side of human behavior manifests itself at work, and how people with different personality styles relate to each other, they can foster creativity and cooperation among their colleagues and subordinates. The personality prototypes presented in Chapters 2 through 5—useful despite the generalizations that labeling relies on—are tools to help readers become more astute in understanding and helping people. Chapter 6 looks at the contagiousness of emotion in the organizational setting, focusing on the issue of charismatic leadership in the context of the psychology of elation. Chapter 7 addresses the question of neurotic imposture—that is, feeling like a fake in the face of proven competence—a common response among executives.

Part Two (“Changing Mindsets”) focuses on the educational “technology” needed to change the mindset of executives. This section discusses methods of intervention that can lead to transformational change. Chapters 8 and 9 explore a highly effective leadership intervention technique that involves creating a safe, transitional space to foster new learning—creating what we might call a “learning community”—with a detailed example showing how such a change process can be successful. Chapter 10 deals with leadership coaching in general and discusses various leadership coaching techniques. Chapter 11 addresses group leadership coaching, a technique that has proved to be highly effective in making true change a reality in “natural” working groups or executive teams.

Part Three (“Understanding the Psychodynamics of Groups and Organizations”) deals with the question of system-wide clinical intervention in organizations. Chapter 12 places the psychology of small and large groups under the microscope, looking at group behavior, social defenses, the concept of the organizational ideal, and the “neurotic” (or dysfunctional) organization. The purpose of this chapter is to help the reader better understand the role of systemic organizational dysfunctionality. Chapter 13 presents a leadership/organizational “audit” and explores the possibility of clinical organizational interventions via a change agent or clinically informed organizational consultant. The final chapter (Chapter 14) explores the question of human authenticity, weighing the implications of presenting a true versus a false self, and discusses the creation of authentizotic organizations, places of work where people feel alive and are called to give their best.

Why is it worth an executive’s time to read about all these issues? Because people around the world complain that there’s a great discrepancy between what their leaders say and what their leaders do, and that discrepancy is grounded in leaders’ lack of awareness of their own psychological drivers and mood states—their “inner theater” (a subject that will be addressed in greater detail in the next chapter). That unawareness makes them prisoners of hidden forces that dictate their decisions and their behavior. Leaders and followers alike will continue to send mixed and confusing messages as long as they are unaware of the content of their inner theater.

Readers should be forewarned that uncovering these unconscious patterns can be uncomfortable, anxiety-provoking, and even disorienting. Going one step further and changing the script in one’s inner theater is even more formidable. Those who are in situations of personal trauma are typically more willing than the complacent to unlock their inner theater, because the pain of not doing so appears to be worse than the pain of facing their inner truth. Thus preparedness for change differs by individual, with power often being the determining factor. People in positions of power are much more likely than their subordinates to find excuses not to engage in personal work that’s emotionally painful. The fact that leaders can easily inflict their inadequacies on others, blaming them for lack of performance and poor communication, makes such an avoidance strategy even more likely. People lower in the power firmament have fewer opportunities to bestow blame; for them, scapegoating isn’t an easy option.

The reluctance of leaders to take a hard look at themselves is supported by the societal myth that leadership is a rational endeavor. Unfortunately, this denial of psychological reality encourages leaders to go on sending mixed messages, practicing inappropriate behavior, and blaming external factors for their mistakes rather than taking personal responsibility. To be truly effective, leaders need to preserve a hold on reality; they need to see things as they really are, avoiding the intense pressure from subordinates to reside in a hall of mirrors. In some cases this means being willing to rely on professional support and expertise in uncovering psychological drivers and making the personal shifts necessary for leadership excellence. In all cases it means accepting that such a process takes time. But that time is well spent: raising one’s personal awareness and learning how to make the most of strengths and minimize weaknesses is in fact an act of self-sacrifice, done not just for personal gratification but also for the good of one’s co-workers and of the organization.

Despite the well-documented benefits to the organization of emotional intelligence, organizational life has typically been hostile to the inner world of feeling. So-called rational, objective thinking is supposed to be superior to mere feeling, which can “contaminate” our judgment so that we fail to act in a “rational” manner. But that’s a very tenuous position. In point of fact, without feelings there are no actions. Without feelings there is no passion. Everything important to human beings is affect-ridden. The things important to us have emotional meaning to make us think about them. And that’s the case in organizations as much as it is in our personal lives. Feelings stand central in organizational life and are expressed in many different forms.

What I’m doing here—exploring the role of emotion in personality, in decision-making, in the process of change, and in group processes—isn’t new. Many poets, novelists, and playwrights have done it before me. They were the early psychologists. Among the best was Shakespeare, who still today is a great teacher regarding the ways of the world and the foibles of leaders. In showing the shadow side of leaders’ behavior, he’s second to none: Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear are great examples. On the heath King Lear asks Gloucester: “How do you see the world?” Gloucester, who is blind, answers: “I see it feelingly.” My hope is that the men and women who run the world’s organizations will do the same.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As people grow older, they sometimes discover that while they can enjoy life on their own, true appreciation of life requires companionship. Voltaire’s comment, “By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property,” still has a ring of truth. Books aren’t written in isolation. As has been said by many others before, authors stand on the shoulders of others. As the years go by, my memory of which people influenced my way of thinking in various areas has become hazier. I have so deeply internalized many ideas that the original contributors have been lost. Certain memories, however, have retained their clarity. Looking back into my past, I realize the extent to which my years at Harvard deeply affected me. That period still fills me with a sense of wonder at all the new experiences (cultural and otherwise) I was exposed to.

Four names from that period (1960s and 70s) stand out as influential in the development of my thinking. The first is Erik Erikson, the well-known psychoanalyst and teacher of human development. His lectures at Harvard College were like psychodramas, hugely exciting to me. He made me realize, through his studies of transformational leaders such as Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi, the importance of the interface of personality and historical moment. Another person who had a huge influence on me was C. Roland Christensen, a professor of business policy who contributed enormously to the quality of teaching at Harvard. Apart from the influence he has had on my teaching style, his humanity and wisdom still touch me. His sudden, untimely death has been hard to take, although he lives on in my inner world. My main mentor during those years at the Harvard Business School was Abraham Zaleznik, professor of leadership. His influence on my way of looking at the world and at organizations has been enormous. My weekly dialogues with him taught me many things about the creative process. His seminars left me with a sense of wonder about the mysteries of the mind. The crossing of our paths very much determined my career choice, nebulous and precarious as it looked at the time. Last but certainly not least, Sudhir Kakar, listed in a recent issue of the Nouvel Observateur as the “psychoanalyst of the world,” helped to shape my perspective. Who would have thought, when we first met as young men in Abraham Zaleznik’s seminar, that our lives would intertwine as they have?

On a more contemporary note, I would like to thank my five program directors who work at the INSEAD Global Leadership Center: Elisabet Engellau (who is much more than a colleague), Roger Lehman, Jean-Claude Noel, Stanislav Shekshnia and Martine van den Poel. In addition, I like to express my appreciation to Konstantin Korotov, once my doctoral student and now a professor at the European School of Management and Technology (although still associated with INSEAD Global Leadership Center). Their initiative and creative thinking in making the Center the success it has become (often against all odds) is very much appreciated. It has been an incredible journey for me to learn from all of them and from the students who pass through our doors. I would also like to express my appreciation to Agatha Halczewska-Figuet, the Center’s executive director and to the Center’s staff, which keeps the “back office” running efficiently: Fabienne Chemin, Silke Bequet and Nadine Theallier.

During the past year I have learned the hard way that trying to both write and run the Center is extremely difficult. Therefore, the buffering roles played by my research project manager, Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, and my assistant, Sheila Loxham, have been doubly appreciated. Their heroic efforts have helped keep the random variable that I am, on track. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my two editors, Sally Simmons and Kathy Reigstad, for their skill in making the unreadable readable. My appreciation for these two magicians, who practice their craft not only on words but also on logic, is hard to put into words.

Carl Jung once said that “one looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” How true! In this context, I want to thank my students, who have been willing to experiment in telling their stories, and in doing so, touched the listener.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries brings a different view to the muchstudied subjects of leadership and the dynamics of individual and organizational change. Applying his knowledge and experience of economics (Econ. Drs., University of Amsterdam), management (ITP, MBA, and DBA, Harvard Business School), and psychoanalysis (member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association), Kets de Vries scrutinizes the interface between international management, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and dynamic psychiatry. His specific areas of interest are leadership, career dynamics, executive stress, entrepreneurship, family business, succession planning, cross-cultural management, teambuilding, coaching, and the dynamics of corporate transformation and change.

A clinical professor of leadership development, he holds the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chair of Leadership Development at INSEAD, France and Singapore, and is director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Center. In addition, he is program director of INSEAD’s top-management seminar, “The Challenge of Leadership: Creating Reflective Leaders” and scientific director of the program “Consulting and Coaching for Change.” In addition to having received the International Leadership Association’s prestigious annual leadership scholar award for his “contribution to the classroom and the boardroom,” he has also five times received INSEAD’s distinguished teacher award. He has also held professorships at McGill University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Montreal), and the Harvard Business School, and he has lectured at management institutions around the world. He is a founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations. The Financial Times, Le Capital, Wirtschaftswoche, and The Economist have judged Manfred Kets de Vries among the world’s top 50 management thinkers and among the top 100 most influential people in human resource management.

Kets de Vries is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than twenty books, including Power and the Corporate Mind (1975, new edition 1985, with Abraham Zaleznik), Organizational Paradoxes: Clinical Approaches to Management (1980, new edition 1994), The Irrational Executive: Psychoanalytic Explorations in Management (1984, editor), The Neurotic Organization: Diagnosing and Changing CounterProductive Styles of Management (1984, new edition 1990, with Danny Miller), Unstable at the Top (1988, with Danny Miller), Prisoners of Leadership (1989), Handbook of Character Studies (1991, with Sidney Perzow), Organizations on the Couch (1991), Leaders, Fools and Impostors (1993), the prize-winning Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane: Essays on Organizations and Leadership (1995, the Critics’ Choice Award 1995-96), Family Business: Human Dilemmas in the Family Firm (1996), The New Global Leaders: Percy Barnevik, Richard Branson, and David Simon (1999, with Elizabeth Florent-Treacy), Struggling with the Demon: Perspectives on Individual and Organizational Irrationality (2001), The Leadership Mystique (2001, new edition 2006), The HappinessEquation (2002), The Global Executive Leadership Inventory (2003), The New Russian Business Leaders (2004), Are Leaders Born or Are They Made? The Case of Alexander the Great (2004) and Lessons on Leadership by Terror: Finding Shaka Zulu in the Attic (2004). He has also developed a number of multi-rater feedback instruments: Global Executive Leadership Inventory (2005), The Personality Audit (in press) and The Leadership Archetype Questionnaire.

In addition, Kets de Vries has published over 250 scientific papers as chapters in books and as articles in such journals as Behavioral Science, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Administration & Society, Organizational Dynamics, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Forecasting, California Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Psychoanalytic Review, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, European Management Journal, International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, Harper’s, and Psychology Today. He has also written over 150 case studies, including eight that received the Best Case of the Year award. He is a regular writer for a number of magazines. His work has been featured in such publications as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Business Week, the Economist, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune. His books and articles have been translated into over twenty-five languages. He is a member of seventeen editorial boards. He is one of the few Europeans who have been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management.

Kets de Vries is a consultant on organizational design/transformation and strategic human resource management to leading US, Canadian, European, African, and Asian companies. As a global consultant in executive development, he has worked with clients such as ABB, Aegon, Air Liquide, Alcan, Alcatel, Accenture, Bain Consulting, Bang & Olufsen, Bonnier, BP, Ericsson, GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, HypoVereinsbank, Investec, KPMG, Lego, Lufthansa, Lundbeck, McKinsey, Novartis, Nokia, Novo-Nordisk, Rank Xerox, Shell, SHV, SABMiller, Standard Bank of South Africa, Unilever, and Volvo Car Corporation. As an educator and consultant, he has worked in more than forty countries.

The Dutch government made Kets de Vries an officer in the Order of Oranje Nassau in 1997. He was the first fly fisherman in Outer Mongolia and is a member of New York’s Explorers Club. In his spare time he can be found in the rainforests or savannas of Central Africa, in the Siberian taiga, in the Pamir mountains, in Arnhemland or within the Arctic Circle.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: THE CLINICAL PARADIGM

What could an entirely rational being speak of with another entirely rational being?

—Emmanuel Levinas

I have yet to meet the famous Rational Economic Man theorists describe. Real people have always done inexplicable things from time to time, and they show no sign of stopping.

—Charles Sanford, Jr.

As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

—Andrew Carnegie

Be master of mind rather than mastered by mind.

—Zen proverb

There’s a Zen tale about a person who noticed a disturbing bump under a rug. This person tried to smooth out the rug, but every time she did so, the bump reappeared. In utter frustration, she finally lifted up the rug, and to her great surprise, out slid an angry snake.

In an organizational context, this story can be viewed as a metaphor for the occasions when, in making interventions, we deal only with the symptoms. Inevitably, despite our attempts to smooth things over, the snake beneath—the underlying cause—keeps working its mischief. Unless we pull out that snake and deal with it, it will confound our best efforts to improve organizational efficiency.

Like the woman with the rug, too many management scholars restrict themselves to a mechanical view of life in the workplace. They look at surface phenomena—bumps on the rug—rather than at deep structure. Too often, the collective unconscious of business practitioners and scholars alike subscribes to the myth that the only thing which matters is what we see and know (in other words, that which is conscious). That myth is grounded in organizational behavior concepts of an extremely rational nature—concepts based on assumptions about human beings made by economists (at worst) or behavioral psychologists (at best). The social sciences, ever desperate to gain more prestige, seem unable to stop pretending to be natural sciences; they cannot relinquish their obsession with the directly measurable 1. For far too many people, the spirit of the economic machine appears to be alive and well and living in organizations. Although the existing repertoire of “rational” concepts has proven time and again to be insufficient to untangle the really knotty problems that trouble organizations, the myth of rationality persists.

Consequently, organizational behavior concepts used to describe processes such as individual motivation, communication, leadership, interpersonal relationships, group and intergroup processes, corporate culture, organizational structure, change, and development are based on behaviorist models, with an occasional dose of humanistic psychology thrown in for good measure. Such an approach (behind which hovers the irrepressible ghost of Frederick Taylor, the premier advocate of scientific management) guarantees a rather two-dimensional way of looking at the world of work. Many executives believe that behavior in organizations concerns only conscious, mechanistic, predictable, easy-to-understand phenomena. The more elusive processes that take place in organizations—phenomena that deserve rich description—are conveniently ignored.

That the organizational man or woman is not just a conscious, highly focused maximizing machine of pleasures and pains, but is also a person subject to many (often contradictory) wishes, fantasies, conflicts, defensive behavior, and anxieties—some conscious, others beyond consciousness—isn’t a popular perspective for most businesspeople. Neither is the idea that concepts taken from such fields as psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and dynamic psychiatry might have a place in the world of work. Such concepts are generally rejected out of hand on the grounds that they’re too individually based, too focused on abnormal behavior, and in the case of the psychoanalytic method of investigation, too reliant on selfreported case studies thereby creating problems of verification.

Valid as some of these criticisms may be, the fact remains that any meaningful explanation of humanity requires different means of verification than do the so-called hard sciences. In spite of what philosophers of science like to say about this subject, no causal claim in clinical psychology (or history and economics, for that matter) can be verified in the same way as can claims in empirical sciences such as experimental physics or astronomy. When we enter the realm of a person’s inner world—seeking to understand that individual’s desires, hopes, and fears—efforts at falsification are as important as the truths they conceal.

GIVING THE UNCONSCIOUS ITS DUE

The best bridge from the certainties of the empirical sciences to the ambiguities of the human mind is what I call the “clinical paradigm”—a conceptual framework that not only recognizes but celebrates the human factor, building on psychoanalytic concepts and techniques. Though the notion that there’s more to organizational behavior than meets the eye is anathema to many management scholars, practitioners who deny the reality of unconscious phenomena—who refuse to bring those phenomena to consciousness and take them into consideration—increase the gap between rhetoric and reality. Rejecting the clinical paradigm is a mistake, plain and simple. After all, it’s individuals who make up organizations and create the units that contribute to social processes. Even en masse, however, people are subject to laws which cannot be tested by experimental physics. Moreover, like it or not, “abnormal behavior” is more “normal” than most people are prepared to admit. All of us have a neurotic side. Mental health and illness aren’t dichotomous phenomena but opposing positions on a continuum. Furthermore, whether a person is labeled normal or abnormal, exactly the same psychological processes apply.

In light of these observations, management scholars and leaders need to revisit the following questions: Is the typical executive really a logical, dependable human being? Is management really a rational task performed by rational people according to sensible organizational objectives? Given the plethora of highly destructive actions taken by business and political leaders, we shouldn’t even have to ask. It should be clear that many of those activities which are incomprehensible from a rational point of view, signal that what really goes on in organizations takes place in the intrapsychic and interpersonal world of the key players, below the surface of day-to-day behaviors. That underlying mental activity and behavior needs to be understood in terms of conflicts, defensive behaviors, tensions, and anxieties.

It’s something of a paradox that, while at a conscious level we might deny the presence of unconscious processes, at the level of behavior and action we live out such processes every day all over the world. Though we base business strategies on theoretical models derived from the “rational economic man”, we count on real people (with all their conscious and unconscious quirks) to make and implement decisions. Even the most successful organizational leaders are prone to highly irrational behavior, a reality that we ignore at our peril.

When the illusions created by the concept of homo economicus prevail over the reality of homo sapiens, people interested in what truly happens in organizations are left with a vague awareness that things that they can’t make sense of are occurring. When faced with knotty organizational situations, they feel ineffective and helpless. Far too many well-intentioned and well-constructed plans derail daily in workplaces around the world because of out-of-awareness forces that influence behavior.

Those plans include all change efforts that rely on intervention techniques which focus on the rational side of human behavior to the exclusion of the emotional side. Efforts by traditional organizational change agents—men and women burdened by the legacy of homo economicus—generally come across as overly optimistic and even naïve. Only by accepting that executives just like the rest of us aren’t paragons of rationality can we understand why such plans derail and put them back on track again—or better yet, keep them from derailing in the first place 2,3-4.

Experience has shown that in the case of many knotty organizational situations, the clinical paradigm can go a long way toward bringing clarity and providing long-lasting solutions. And no body of knowledge has made a more sustained and successful attempt to deal with the meaning of human events than psychoanalysis. The psychoanalytic method of investigation, which observes people longitudinally (that is, over time), offers an important window into the operation of the mind, identifying meaning in the most personal, emotional experiences. Its method of drawing inferences about meaning out of otherwise incomprehensible phenomena is more effective than what competing theories have to offer. By making sense out of executives’ deeper wishes and fantasies, and showing how these fantasies influence behavior in the world of work, the psychodynamic orientation offers a practical way of discovering how organizations really function.

TAPPING INTO PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES AND TECHNIQUES

The fact that a growing number of management scholars are realizing that they need to pay attention to weaker, below-the-surface signals in the organizational system is noteworthy in the context of articles in the popular press asking whether Sigmund Freud is dead. People who pose this question are usually focused exclusively on Freud’s own views from the early 20th century, forgetting that psychoanalytic theory and therapy have continued to evolve since that time. Psychoanalytic theory has become increasingly sophisticated, incorporating the findings from domains such as dynamic psychiatry, developmental psychology, anthropology, neurophysiology, cognitive theory, family systems theory, and individual and group psychotherapy. To condemn present-day psychoanalytic theory as outdated is like attacking modern physics because Newton never understood Einstein’s theory of relativity. Although various aspects of Freud’s theories are no longer valid in light of new information about the workings of the mind, fundamental components of psychoanalytic theory have been scientifically and empirically tested and verified, specifically as they relate to cognitive and emotional processes 5-6. As disappointing as it may be to some of his present-day critics, many of Freud’s ideas retain their relevance.

As an archaeologist of the mind, Freud believed that neurotic symptoms can be used to decode why people behave the way they do. As conspicuous signifiers of a person’s inner world, they can be seen, he believed, as “the royal road to an understanding of the unconscious.” I contend that this perspective can be applied, by analogy, to organizations: just as every neurotic symptom has an explanatory history, so has every organizational act; just as symptoms and dreams can be viewed as signs replete with meaning, so can specific acts, statements, and decisions in the boardroom. Likewise, the repetition of certain phenomena in the workplace suggests the existence of specific motivational configurations. The identification of cognitive and affective distortions in an organization’s leaders and followers can help executives recognize the extent to which unconscious fantasies and out-of-awareness behavior affect decision-making and management practices in their organization.

Freud himself didn’t make any direct observations about the application of his ideas to the world of work (although later in life he became interested in society at large), but several of his followers—psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, and Donald Winnicott—applied aspects of his theories to the workplace. The ideas of these psychoanalysts have been further explored by a large number of clinically informed scholars of organizations 2,3-4; 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15-16. The work of these scholars has gone a long way toward creating a deep and rich understanding of life in organizations. Their insights have also opened the way to more effective consultation and intervention in organizations.

The clinical paradigm, with its broadly integrative psychodynamic perspective, has much to contribute to our understanding of organizations and the practice of management. A psychologically informed perspective can help us understand the hidden dynamics associated with individual motivation, leadership, collusive situations, social defenses, toxic organizational cultures, “neurotic” organizations (that is, organizations tainted by the particular neurosis of its top executive), and the extent to which individuals and organizations can be prisoners of their past. Advocates of the clinical paradigm recognize the limits of rationality and reject a purely economist, behaviorist view of the world of work. They have concluded that behavioral and statistical data-gathering experiments can supply only a partial understanding of complex organizational phenomena, contrary to what advocates of management as a natural science would have us believe. An additional dimension of analysis is needed to comprehend organizational behavior and the people working in the system: we have to factor in that which is directly observable.

Scholars of management need to recognize that organizations as systems have their own life—a life that’s not only conscious but also unconscious, not only rational but also irrational. The clinical paradigm is essential to provide insight into that life, into the underlying reasons for executive and employee behavior and actions. To understand the whole picture, we need to pay attention to these presenting internal and social dynamics, to the intricate dance between leaders and followers, and to the various unconscious and invisible psychodynamic processes and structures that influence the behavior of individuals, dyads, and groups in organizations. People who dismiss the complex clinical dimension in organizational analysis cannot hope to go beyond a relatively impoverished, shallow understanding of life in organizations.

In business as in individual life, psychological awareness is the first step toward psychological health. The truth is that by denying the reality of the unconscious, by refusing to make it conscious and work with it, we have institutionalized the chasm between reality and rhetoric. Organizations can’t perform successfully if the quirks and irrational processes that are part and parcel of the organizational participants’ inner world aren’t taken into consideration by top management. Because unconscious dynamics have a significant impact on life in organizations, organizational leaders (and followers) must recognize and plan for those dynamics.

PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE CLINICAL PARADIGM

Having looked at the clinical paradigm in general terms, we’re now ready to examine its philosophical underpinnings. These are based on four premises:

First, the clinical paradigm argues that there’s a rationale behind every human act—even those that are apparently irrational. This point of view stipulates that all behavior has an explanation. Because that explanation is often elusive—inextricably interwoven with unconscious needs and desires—one has to do “detective work” to tease out hints and clues regarding perplexing behavior. More important, though, finding meaning in seemingly irrational behavior requires emotional intelligence. Whether one is an analyst helping an individual reach self-understanding or an organizational consultant working with executives to diagnose an entire organization, effective deconstruction can take place only when the “detective’s” perception is acute enough to cope with a barrage of mitigating factors, including resistances, ingrained behavior patterns, transference reactions and projective mechanisms.

The second premise on which the clinical paradigm rests is that a great deal of mental life—thoughts, feelings, and motives—lies outside of conscious awareness. People aren’t always aware of what they’re doing—much less why they’re doing it. Though hidden from rational thought, the human unconscious affects (and in some cases even dictates) conscious reality. Even the most “rational” people have blind spots, and even the “best” people have a shadow side—a side that they don’t know—and don’t want to know. What’s more, people work to increase their blind spots: they develop defensive structures over time that make them blind not only to their motivation for a certain dysfunctional behavior but also to the behavior itself even though that behavior may be obvious to everyone else. Regrettably, people who fail to see their own dysfunctional behavior can’t take responsibility for it. Though it’s not pleasant to admit that one is sometimes a prisoner of the unconscious—we cherish the illusion that we’re in control of our lives, after all—accepting the presence of the cognitive and affective unconscious can be liberating, because it helps us understand why we do the things we do and how we might change for the better.

The third premise underlying the clinical paradigm is that nothing is more central to who a person is than the way he or she expresses and regulates emotions. Along with cognition, emotions determine behavior; and characteristic patterns of emotion, thought, and behavior shape personality. The emotional reactions of infancy are primarily biological, and they’re tied to the most basic human need systems. From early on, however, socialization occurs through the mediation of the primary caretakers. As socialization progresses, developmental processes enable the individual to take on the various emotional “roles”—sadness, joy, and so on.

While all humans are born with a particular temperament, this constitutional quality gives us only a predisposition to certain emotions. Before we’re able to express any given emotion, the imagery associated with that particular feeling-state has to be internalized. Such internalization occurs as the child grows and matures and learns from socialization. By the time adulthood is reached, the regulation of emotions has become an integral part of one’s personality, and mood-state can be used as a barometer of psychological and physical well-being. How a person perceives and expresses emotions may change as the years go by, however, depending on one’s life experiences 17,18-19.

The experiencing of emotions enables people to come into greater contact with themselves, to find out what they feel (as opposed to what they think) about things, what they like and dislike, and what they want and don’t want. Some people are able to express emotions appropriately and comfortably, while others struggle to find words for what they feel, and associate emotions (sometimes even those that we think of as positive) with painful thoughts. Emotions color experiences with positive and negative connotations, creating preferences. Emotions form the basis for the internalization of mental representations of the self and others that guide relationships throughout one’s life. Furthermore, emotions serve people in many adaptive and defensive ways, depending on the personal “script” of their inner theater.

The fourth premise underlying the clinical paradigm is that human development is an inter- and intrapersonal process. We’re all products of our past, influenced until the day we die by the developmental experiences given by our caretakers 20,21,22,23,24-25. Childhood experiences play an absolutely crucial role in personality development, particularly in the way people relate to others. These experiences contribute to specifically preferred response patterns that in turn result in a tendency to repeat certain behavior patterns. The psychological imprints of primary early caregivers—particularly our parents—are so strong that they cause a confusion in time and place, making us act toward others in the present as if they were significant people from the past; and these imprints stay with us and guide our interactions throughout our lives. Though we’re generally unaware of experiencing “transference”—the term given by psychologists to this confusion in time and place—we may relate to our boss as we did to our mother, or to an important client as we did to our father. The mismatch between the reality of our present situation and our subconscious scenario (colleagues or clients aren’t parents, after all) may lead to bewilderment, anxiety, depression, anger, and even aggression.

THE INNER THEATER

Freud focused on the human unconscious—that part of our being which, hidden from rational thought, affects and interprets our conscious reality. The impact of unconscious processes is considerable in the world outside work—in the domains of creativity, love, and friendship, for example—as most people would readily acknowledge; but it also has a considerable effect on thought, behavior, and outcomes in organizational life. Each organizational participant has to deal with what can be described as his or her “inner theater”—the programming that each person has incorporated from his or her genetic inheritance and infant experience. Although everyone from the mail clerk to the CEO has a unique theme, it’s the inner theater of executives that concerns us here. Given the power that executives wield, the influence of their inner theater on the rest of the organization is considerable.

Our inner theater results from a combination of nature and nurture. Although our brains are genetically hardwired with certain instinctual behavior patterns, this wiring isn’t irrevocably fixed. Through the nature-nurture interface, highly complex motivational need systems determine the unique internal theatre of the individual—the stage on which the major themes that define the person are played out. These motivational need systems are the rational forces that lie behind behaviors and actions that are perceived to be irrational. As gasoline fuels an engine, the cognitive and emotional patterns that develop out of these interrelated motivational need systems fuel our behavior. For each one of us, our unique mixture of motivational needs will determine our personality. Especially over the crucial first months and years of our life (though in later years as well, to a lesser extent), rewiring occurs in response to developmental factors that we are exposed to.

The interface of our motivational needs with environmental factors (especially human factors, in the form of caretakers, siblings, teachers, and other important figures) defines our essential uniqueness. The mental schemas that are the outcome of this interface are then carried within us for the rest of our lives, guiding our subsequent relationships with others. These mental representations of our self, others, and relationships help us make sense of all aspects of reality, serve as the standard by which we judge what we see and decide what we want, and govern our motivations and actions. These representations become the operational code that determines how we react across situations 26-27. They influence how we act and react in our daily lives, whether at home, at play, or at work.

MOTIVATIONAL NEED SYSTEMS

The British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in an effort to explain human behavior, argued that nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. These masters govern us in all that we think, do, and say. We can take his view of human nature one step further through the notion of motivational need systems. Motivational need systems serve as the operational code that drives behavior. Each of these need systems is operational in every person beginning at infancy and continuing throughout the life-cycle, altered by the forces of age, learning, and maturation.

The importance that any one of the need systems has in an individual is determined by three regulating forces: innate and learned response patterns, the role of significant caretakers, and the extent to which the individual attempts to recreate positive emotional states experienced in infancy and childhood. As these forces and need systems interact during maturation, mental schemas emerge—“templates” in the unconscious, if you will. These schemas create symbolic model scenes (what I like to call “scripts” in a person’s inner theater) that regulate fantasy and influence behavior and action 20-21; 28,29-30.

Some of these motivational need systems are more basic than others. At the most fundamental is the system that regulates a person’s physiological needs—that is, needs for food, water, elimination, sleep, and breathing. Another system handles an individual’s needs for sensual enjoyment and (later) sexual excitement, while still another deals with the need to respond to certain situations through antagonism and withdrawal. Although these primary need systems impact the work situation to some extent, two other, higher-level systems are of particular interest for life in organizations: the attachment/affiliation need system and the exploration/assertion need system.

Let’s look at the need for attachment/affiliation first. Among humans there exists an innately unfolding experience of human relatedness 31,32,33-34. Humankind’s essential humanness is revealed in their seeking relationships with other people, in sharing something. As the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott used to say, there’s no such thing as a baby, only a mothering pair. The baby can’t do without the mother. That need for attachment, beginning in infancy but lasting throughout life, involves the process of engagement with other human beings, the universal experience of wanting to be close to others. It also involves the pleasure of sharing and affirmation. When the human need for intimate engagement is extrapolated to groups, the desire to enjoy intimacy can be described as a need for affiliation. Both attachment and affiliation serve an emotional balancing role by confirming an individual’s self-worth and contributing to his or her sense of self-esteem.

The need for exploration/assertion also has a lot to do with who a person becomes and how that person sees him- or herself. The need for exploration—closely associated with cognition and learning—affects a person’s ability to play and to work. This need is manifested soon after birth: infant observation has shown that novelty, as well as the discovery of the effects of certain actions, causes a prolonged state of attentive arousal in infants. Similar reactions to opportunities for exploration continue into adulthood. Closely tied to the need for exploration is the need for self-assertion—that is, the need to be able to choose what we want to do. Playful exploration and manipulation of the environment in response to exploratory-assertive motivation produces a sense of effectiveness and competency, of autonomy, initiative, industry, and efficacy 35-36. Because striving, competing, and seeking mastery are fundamental characteristics of the human personality, exercising assertiveness—following our preferences, acting in a determined manner—serves as a form of affirmation.

As noted above, each motivational system is either strengthened or loses power in reaction to innate and learned response patterns, the developmental impact of caretakers, and the ability to recreate previous emotional states. Through the nature-nurture interface, these highly complex motivational systems eventually determine the unique internal theater of the individual—the stage on which the major themes that define the person are played out. These motivational systems are the rational forces that lie behind behaviors and actions that are perceived to be irrational. We bring to every experience a style of interacting, now scripted for us, that we learned initially in childhood. In other words, how we related to and interacted with parents and other close caregivers during the early years affects how we relate to others—especially authority figures—now in our adulthood.

CORE CONFLICTUAL RELATIONSHIP THEMES

The basic script of a person’s inner theater is determined by the motivational need systems described above. Within that basic script, however, certain themes develop over time—themes that reflect the preeminence of certain inner wishes that contribute to our unique personality style. These “core conflictual relationship themes” (CCRT) translate into consistent patterns by which we relate to others 37. Put another way, our basic wishes color our life-scripts, which in turn shape our relationships with others, determining the way we believe others will react to us and the way we react to others. People’s lives may be colored by the wish to be loved, for example, or the wish to be understood, or to be noticed, or to be free from conflict, or to be independent, or to help—or even to hinder, or to hurt others.