Anyone who works with people in groups needs to understand the ways in which the individuals in that group will be handling the emotional dynamics of it. Emotions always enter into groups, no matter what the subject matter is. And, as human beings, we have a lot of ways of handling them. Not all emotions are particularly problematic, of course – provided we are aware of them and engage with them. The trouble is where we are unaware of them, where they are in the unconscious, yet they (or our way of dealing with them) impact on the group and on our individual or collective decision making.
It is so uncommon to be in a group where the emotions are all positive that I shalln’t even try to go there. Even when it looks as though this is the case, almost always someone (and, more likely, several members) is experiencing the group in a negative way. Even the most innocuous of settings where there is absolutely nothing to be gained by it, can be a place where some people will allow the worst of their passions to find expression. Most of these negative experiences of groups then, revolve around a sense of being ‘threatened’. The group leader who tries to set an environment that is ‘supportive’, ‘open’, ‘nurturing’ and so on, will by this very means alone, threaten some people. So understanding how people deal with the feeling of being threatened is crucial to working with groups.
Practitioners of psychodynamics talk about a set of tools which the mind uses to allow it to cope when it is threatened. These threats fall into three types – REAL WORLD ones, situations where we INSTINCTIVELY feel anxious (said to relate to the “Id”), and where we are anxious because of our CONSCIENCE (related to the “Super-ego”).
These tools were originally known as “defence mechanisms”, though today they are often refered to as “coping strategies”. This is an important difference and understanding why can help us understand an important aspect of psychodynamics generally.
According to Freud, the defences were necessary because they allowed the Ego to ‘survive’ against the three threats I’ve mentioned above. ‘Survival’ is an unfortunate choice of word, because most people associate it with death and the ‘death’ of the ego isn’t death in the physical sense. As I mentioned in my earlier blog (A very quick introduction to Psychodynamics), the Ego is the part of our mind responsible for common sense and rational thought. If it is ‘overwhelmed’, which is the term I personally prefer, then we begin to develop ‘neuroses’ or, at least, to display ‘neurotic symptoms’.
The popular interpretation of ‘neurotic symptoms’ is a kind of nervy, anxious, highly strung, or tense behaviour. This isn’t a million miles from the psychoanalytic definition, which is a bit broader: behaviour that isn’t normal, that isn’t caused by some physical problem, isn’t psychotic (a mental health illness where someone is potentially rendered incapable of rational thought and action – non compos mentis) and can be explained in psychological terms. (In other words, it’s a bit of a ‘collect all’ term for problems that leave someone sane but suffering!)
So, the ‘defence mechanisms’ are the tools used by the mind to protect our ability to think rationally, to apply common sense. To spot their occasional failure, we look for neurotic symptoms. It was Freud’s daughter, Anna, who published one of the earliest and most comprehensive lists of the ‘defences’ in 1937. There are twelve of them and I’m going to list them, and give a quick definition, because I think they are really useful behaviours to watch out for. The problem with this list is that, while the mechanisms are good at allowing us to cope with an overwhelming of our common sense, a few of them actually make the neurotic symptoms worse, making us appear less ‘normal’ rather than more so. That is why people like myself, who work largely with ‘normal’ people, prefer the term ‘coping strategy’ to ‘defence mechanism’.
I shall, almost certainly, write separately about some of these ‘coping strategies’, but here’s a quick round up of them…
Regression: reverting to earlier (usually infantile) ways of behaving. A classic example in a business context would be the regression of intellectual curiosity to greed.
Repression: where an unacceptable idea is only accessed in the unconscious. For example, someone feeling ‘attacked’ at work might dream (in quite extreme ways) about revenge.
Reaction-formation: where the opposite to an unacceptable impulse is exaggerated. People who appear to be excessively ‘nice’, ‘polite’, and ‘interested in others’, for example, might actually be harbouring beneath the surface aggressive, critical and self-obsessed desires. To have such wishes is perfectly normal, so their absence is disturbing.
Isolation: where the individual who has experienced an ‘attack’ goes quiet, doesn’t interact, shuts down their emotional responses, before starting again as if nothing had happened. Importantly, they don’t deny what happened, but they have isolated it so it has limited effect. I’ve come across managers who use this frequently, shutting themselves into their office for a few minutes after an emotional encounter, and then emerge ‘as if nothing had happened’, while everyone else is feeling the tension.
Undoing: happens when someone tries to reverse the threat they felt – almost ‘washing it away’ or even ‘flushing’ it away. Often, ‘undoing’ is associated with a ritual behaviour – a particularly systematic way of repeatedly doing things. A situation that I sometimes (tentatively) interpret as ‘undoing’ because of its ‘ritual’ nature is where a management team are going through a significant emotion-laden process and yet insist on dealing with all the steps in their normal meeting agenda, before reaching the last item in ‘any other business’ to which the real issue has been relegated. It is as if they hope that by putting it off, putting it in its place, it will go away or cease to be an issue by the time they get there.
Projection: is where our own (usually unacceptable) wishes for someone else are transferred onto a third party, or (in reverse projection) onto them. Teenage girls can often be heard saying; “I don’t fancy him, but YYY does!” when, of course, they they are experiencing an intensity of passion that they have never experienced before and feels so threatening that they couldn’t possibly acknowledge it. Thus, at work, accusing someone else of being angry is usually a mask for our own anger, especially if the cues that made us think this way were limited or subjective. It can be made even more powerful if we are perceived by others as normally having a persona of being ‘all caring’ (see ‘reaction-formation’, above).
Introjection: is a normal aspect of development, where aspects of someone (or something) else are taken inside ourselves, to be used as if they were a part of us. In normal development, this will be aspects of the behaviour of our parents. Problems arise with this coping mechanism when the introject (such as our father’s way of responding to situations) is inappropriate to the circumstances. I remember being asked to observe a Board meeting at an insurance company in the City. The new Chairman was struggling to work effectively with the management team. What I saw was a man in his late 40s, unconsciously adopting behaviours that he had seen his father demonstrate when he was a child, and which were similar to those of the previous incumbent – a man closer to his father’s generation than to his own. The difference in circumstances wasn’t merely one of age or generation – the whole nature of the industry had changed along with radical shifts in the dynamics of Boards.
Turning against the self: Described by some as a kind of ‘moral masochism’, where we take pleasure in punishing ourselves for our unconscious wicked thoughts. A little too easily confused with depression, or with passivity generally, the difference is that the individual using this experiences pain. Because eroticism doesn’t often emerge openly in work environments this isn’t always the easiest to detect. One situation that I’ve come across a few times that might reflect this kind of defence, is where someone puts themself into a position where there is a strong chance that they will be punished by others for something that they have done. When we look at what they did, it seems either pointless or irrational given their circumstances. Thus we might interpret the behaviour of the chief executive, who is under threat for the limited performance of their organisation, and who then embarks on a series of sexual indiscretions or harassments that were bound to be challenged publicly.
Reversal: is the more general phenomenon of which reaction-formation is a specific example. It happens where the unconscious thoughts can be reversed, so what we see exhibited is the opposite of the thought. The ‘nurturing’ boss, for example, who is actually keeping potential competitors for their position at bay. The ‘facilitator’ who is unconsciously seeking to control might be another.
Sublimation: occurs where the individual channels energy into a socially acceptable activity when their unconscious desires are for less acceptable things to happen (more ‘base’ and usually related to sexual or aggressive urges). The drive behind some corporate social responsibility agendas might be interpreted this way, but it is usually witnessed at the individual level. The ambitious young executive who devotes themself to working out every night at the gym might be a good example. Paintballing as an executive release is a little worrying on this score! Excessive working hours among middle aged men, for whom the frequency and quality of their sex lives has diminished, could well be related. I sometimes wonder whether the historical tolerance of bullying behaviour in some organisations, whereby aggressive behaviour was not seen as so socially unacceptable as it should have been, was related to the sublimation defence?
Splitting: Both projection and denial depend on splitting as a mechanism overall, but one aspect of this way of coping that frightens me when I encounter it is where the individual appears to have two different personalities – one for the public space of work, and the other for the private space of home. Of course, they don’t. In practice, they are experiencing (albeit unconsciously) the same desires all the time. The Canadian government recognised this and used it in a series of powerful TV advertisements…
Denial: on the face of it, is the least robust of all ways of coping. Personally, I think that it is dealing with threats that are almost, or will soon be, conscious. The person who tries to keep doing things the way they always have, when they know that they are not effective, is said to be in denial. It is a significant step in the overall grieving process associated with organisational change. The important aspect is not denial of behaviour but of feelings. I remember a situation a few years ago where a female director was often highly confrontational with the Chief Executive. Her behaviour was quite aggressive and, as HR director I was asked to intervene. Even though I could describe the situations fully, with the words she used and other people’s reactions, she flatly denied that she had any kind of aggressive tendency towards the CEO. In practice, her unconscious ‘desires’ emerged 6 months later, when she became pregnant by him.
So that’s a quick whizz through a few of the things that are almost certainly going on under the surface of most of the minds around the table at your next team meeting!
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.
Best wishes
Psychodynamic confidant, working behind the scenes, helping those of power see organisations, situations, themselves, and other people differently
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