Anton Obholzer, BSc, MB, ChB, DPM, FRCPsych is a psychoanalyst, organizational consultant, and former CEO of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. He is a senior member of faculty of the Advanced Management Programme of the INSEAD Global Leadership Centre in Paris.

Vega Zagier Roberts, MD is an independent consultant and coach, an associate consultant at Tavistock Consulting, and a faculty member on the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust master¿s programme Consulting and Leading in Organisations and doctoral programme Consultation and the Organisation.

List of figures

About the authors

Foreword by Jonathan Gosling

Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgements

A note on confidentiality

A note about `a Tavistock approach¿

Introduction: Making sense of organizations ¿ the institutional roots of the Tavistock approach

James Mosse

PART I

Conceptual framework

1 Some unconscious aspects of organizational life: contributions from psychoanalysis

William Halton

2 The dangers of contagion

Deirdre Moylan

3 The unconscious at work in groups and teams: contributions from the work of Wilfred Bion

Jon Stokes

4 The organization of work: contributions from open systems theory

Vega Zagier Roberts

5 Authority, power and leadership: contributions from group relations training

Anton Obholzer

6 Changing the stories we are `in¿: power, purpose and organization-in-the-mind

Vega Zagier Roberts

PART II

The unconscious at work in human service organizations

Part IIa Working with people in distress

7 Attending to emotional issues on a special care baby unit

Nancy Cohn

8 Containing anxiety in work with damaged children

Chris Mawson

9 Fragmentation and integration in a school for children with physical disabilities

Anton Obholzer

10 Where angels fear to tread: idealism, despondency and inhibition of thought in hospital nursing

Anna Dartington

11 Till death us do part: caring and uncaring in work with older people

Vega Zagier Roberts

12 Working with dying people: on being good enough

Peter Speck

Part IIb Challenges, crises and change

13 The self-assigned impossible task

Vega Zagier Roberts

14 Institutional chaos and personal stress

Jon Stokes

15 The troublesome individual and the troubled institution

Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts

16 Finding a voice: differentiation, representation and empowerment in organizations under threat

James Mosse and Vega Zagier Roberts

17 Confl ict and collaboration: managing intergroup relations

Vega Zagier Roberts

18 Managing social anxieties in public sector organizations

Anton Obholzer

PART III

The unconscious at work in business organizations

Kay Trainor (guest editor)

19 Family patterns at work: how casting light on the shadows of the past can enhance leadership in the present

Francesca Cardona and Sheila Damon

20 Feelings as data

Kay Trainor

21 The myth of rationality: why change efforts so often fail

James Krantz and Kay Trainor

22 Navigating roles in complex systems

Vega Zagier Roberts

23 Beyond the individual: reframing blame and responsibility for `rogue¿ behaviour in the fi nancial services industry

Ajit Menon

24 From managing to leading organizations in their contexts

Matthieu Daum

Afterword: Consulting to oneself

Appendix: The genealogy of systems psychodynamics

Bibliography

Index