The analyst's countertransference when supervising: friend or foe?

This paper explores transference and countertransference dynamics in the supervisory relationship and their impact on the task of supervision. The development of analytic theory in relation to supervision is described and the value-and ambiguity-of the concepts of 'mirroring', 'parallel process' and 'reflective process' are discussed. The impact of organizational dynamics on the supervisory relationship is investigated in relation to four main unconscious forces: a) organizational defences, b) power and authority, c) accountability and responsibility, d) ethical concerns. Clinical situations which illustrate these issues are described and explored and used as a basis for examining the role of the supervisor's countertransference in supervision. The different framework of practice in supervision, as opposed to analysis, is described in terms of its focus, the supervisor's ways of responding and the dynamic process, and the concept of refracted countertransference is introduced and explained.     

Defining the term new in new employee research

Researchers and managers use the term ‘new’ to describe organizational members who have recently joined an organization, but how long are arriving recruits considered ‘new employees’, and what factors drive this new‐to‐old transition? In this paper I hypothesize that co‐worker perceptions of an individual's ‘newness’ in the organization are a function of (1) the individual's relative position in the firm's tenure distribution and (2) the frequency of interaction between the rater and the individual. To evaluate these hypotheses I conducted a sociometric survey among four entrepreneurial organizations (N = 200), asking respondents to evaluate the newness of their co‐workers. The results support both hypotheses, but suggest that relative tenure (defined as a member's percentile rank in the firm's tenure distribution) is the strongest predictor of organizational newness perceptions. More specifically, ‘new employees’ are the 30% of the organization with the lowest tenure. This means that organizational growth and turnover have a major effect on how long arriving recruits are considered new employees, which in turn has implications for new employee research in areas like socialization, mentoring, training and career development.     

In sickness and in health: An exploration of some of the unconscious processes involved in the decision by family caregivers to place a family member with dementia in residential care

This paper explores the feelings, conscious and unconscious, evoked by the difficult decision to place a family member with dementia into residential care. In an exploratory study I interviewed five people who had made this decision with a view to exploring some of the unconscious processes involved in their decision-making. The interviews were interpreted paying attention to my understanding of the transference and my countertransference feelings and as triangulated by a psychodynamic supervision group.

Intimate contact with ageing and death evokes fears about mortality and activates primitive anxieties. The progress of dementia may amplify primitive or psychotic states of functioning, particularly those involving evacuatory projection, and family carers may resort to splitting off unbearable feelings of anxiety which such projections can evoke and may contribute to their decision to look for residential care.

Once placed in residential care different dynamics evolve and further difficult questions arise: how often to visit; whether and when to dispose of the person's possessions and ultimately how to grieve. The focus of this paper is, as far as it is possible, on the partner without dementia as an individual and the impact of their relative's dementia on their lives.     

组织认同的基础理论、测量及相关变量

组织认同是个体源于组织成员身份的一种自我构念,它与组织认定、组织承诺等概念存在显著差异。文章阐述了组织认同基础理论的三种主要观点,对比了差异论、资源论和信息论的研究视角和相互关系。文章着重说明了组织认同的测量工具,分析了组织层面和个人层面的前因变量,以及组织认同对离职意愿等结果变量的影响。文章最后指出今后有必要对扩展定义、影响因素和国家文化差异等方面进行探讨     

Jung's psychoid concept and Bion's proto‐mental concept: a comparison

Jung and Bion both developed theoretical concepts propounding a deeply unknowable area of the psyche in which body and mind are undifferentiated and the individual has no distinct identity, from which a differentiated consciousness arises. In Jung's case, this is enshrined in his psychoid concept and the associated notion of synchronicity and, in Bion's case, in his proto‐mental concept and his ideas on group dynamics. It is by means of these two concepts that Jung and Bion approach and locate a combined body‐mind, a monism, in which body and mind are seen as different aspects of the same thing. This paper reviews the claim that although the two concepts are associated clinically with very different situations, their commonality may arise from a similar intellectual basis: both men appear to have been influenced by the same source of vitalist ideas in philosophy including Henri Bergson, and Jung's ideas also exerted a direct influence on Bion.     

Dialogical mindfulness in supervision role-play

Aims: This exploratory pilot study investigated Mindfulness-based Role-play (MBRP) supervision to find out how therapists would experience the approach, and to what extent they would find it useful, particularly in relation to empathy toward clients. Method: Thirteen therapists participated in a workshop, introducing mindfulness and MBRP supervision, and subsequently had one individual MBRP supervision session. Data collection and analysis: Qualitative data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and analysed with regard to participants' supervision experiences by means of a modified version of the Consensual Qualitative Research method. Findings: Participants predominantly had positive emotional and cognitive responses to their supervision experiences. The main supervision outcomes were empathy with the client's emotional experience, enhanced awareness of functioning as a therapist, and thoughts about how to proceed in therapy. A subset of participants also reported observed effects in therapy with clients. Conclusions: Even taking into account the methodological limitations of the study, these findings are promising and suggest that further research into the MBRP supervision approach is warranted.     

Communication flow and change theory within a family therapy supervision model

This article portrays a model of family therapy clinical supervision using change theory that is most appropriate for use with the videotape, audiotape, case presentation and debriefing from the live session. The most powerful tool during this process is that of communication and assessment of change theorys tools of confidence and conviction. The concepts presented are meant to add an additional dimension to family therapy supervision in cooperation of other theories, not as an end in themselves.Special thanks to Ms. Geri Koncilja of the Informational Technology Center at Colorado State University, Pueblo for illustration and graphic assistance.     

Disasters and helpers: Psychological dynamics and implications for counselling

This paper reviews the recent research on those individuals who might be regarded as the ‘hidden victims' of disasters—the ‘Helpers'. It focusses on the complex interaction between disaster events, coping strategies and individual and personality factors as determinants of psychological and emotional problems in helpers. The discussion seeks to heighten the awareness of professional counsellors of the contribution that they can make to the training, debriefing and counselling of individuals fulfilling the role of helper by illustrating the problems that typify the helper's experience and by discussing a technique for dealing with these problems. Being prepared for the type of problems likely to be encountered and how these problems might be tackled is an important determinant of the effectiveness of the service provided. Duckworth's (1986) problem-solving approach to counselling helpers is assessed and subsequently used as a basis for discussing the role of the above information in the design and application of this problem-solving approach to dealing with the difficulties experienced by helpers as a result of their involvement in disasters.     

Trust and mistrust in organizations: An exploration using an organizational justice framework

This article commences with an overview of trust and mistrust, focusing on the debate about whether these are two ends of a continuum or distinct but interrelated concepts. Building on this review, the relationship between employees' perceptions of organizational justice and their self-categorized feelings of trust and mistrust is considered. It is suggested that organizational justice offers a useful means through which to explain and understand employees' feelings of trust and mistrust. Using case study data drawn from a UK public sector organization, the relationship between employees' feelings of trust and mistrust is explored within a change context. The data suggest that, whereas some employees perceive trust and mistrust as two ends of a continuum, others see them as distinct concepts. These findings are conceptualized as a trust?-?mistrust?-?absence triangle. Drawing on organizational justice as an explanatory theory, reasons for these findings are offered. The article concludes with a discussion regarding the coexistence of trust and mistrust and the explanatory value of organizational justice theory in understanding this.     

Sources of Managers' Knowledge of Organizational Capabilities

In order to compete successfully in an industry, managers in organizations need to learn about emerging best practices and to implement them in their units. An essential part of this learning process is the development of an understanding of the current capabilities of the organization by its managers. We addressed the question of how managers' assessments of their organization's capabilities, which we call organizational self-knowledge, are affected by their exposure to relational and nonrelational sources of information. We developed hypotheses about the relationship between managers' exposure to different “learning channels” for both their individual depth of understanding of specific areas of practice and for their assessments of their organization's capabilities, which together contribute to organizational self-knowledge. We tested these hypotheses through a survey of 128 store managers in the retail food industry. The results showed that exposure to internal sources of information, both relational and nonrelational, as well as to external relational sources of information, is positively related to self-knowledge. Interestingly, the monitoring of external nonrelational sources of information was found to have no bearing on managers' assessments of their organization's capabilities. Our results counter common-sense beliefs and prior research that suggest that external nonrelational sources of information are an important input in assessing and building organizational capabilities.     

Debriefing individuals affected by violence

For some time there has been a growing concern about violence in the workplace. This concern has tended to focus on employees with jobs which involve them in witnessing and dealing with the effects of disasters or traumas, such as the police, firefighters and ambulance personnel, rather than the actual victims of violent incidents. In the early 1980's, a psychological intervention known as either critical incident or psychological debriefing was introduced by the emergency services as a way of reducing the long term effects of exposure to traumatic events. The techniques involved in debriefing have been described by a number of workers (Dyregrov, 1989; Mitchell & Everly, 1993; Raphael, 1986). In all these models of debriefing, the debrief is undertaken with groups of victims, all of whom have been involved in a single traumatic incident as emergency workers. This paper describes the common features of the debriefing process; explains why debriefing is helpful; differentiates between debriefing and counselling; explores and contrasts three models of debriefing. Finally, it looks at a model of individual debriefing developed within the British Post Ofice to meet the specific needs of employees who have suffered personal attacks or other traumatic incidents.     

组织变革准备研究回顾与整合

作为组织实施变革的前奏,组织变革准备包括：（1）组织本身处于变革就绪待发状态,和（2）组织成员在情感及认知上能够接受和容忍组织即将实施变革的程度。文章通过对组织变革准备相关概念、内容结构和测量、前因和后果的梳理,整合出一个新的分析框架。研究指出：未来在深化现有研究的同时,宜多采用跨层次的视角探讨相关构念在不同层面上的影响机制,结合具体变革情境开发有针对性的测量工具,弥补现有研究不足、指导企业实践。     

Die vakante Sitzung in Psychoanalyse und Supervision

In psychoanalysis and also in supervision the analyst’s and supervisor’s handling of the question of the vacant or missed session and a possible related fee are evident in word and action. In analysis the analyst and the analysand exchange views. In supervision the debate runs on two levels: the supervisand and the supervisor talk about the therapy processes that happen between the supervisand and the patient including the handling of vacant sessions and related fees. Above that there is a real and actual exchange on the question of vacant sessions in the supervisory relationship. Often the analyst’s, supervisor’s and supervisand’s own conscious views about unacceptability and unreasonable hardship define which so-called exceptions and goodwill arrangements they believe they are obliged to offer with respect to their supervisands and analysands without these having their say. This article illustrates how a (unconscious) “to-have-one’s-say” of analysands in treatment and of supervisands in supervision can be initiated and how this can lead to a deeper understanding of the emotions and conflicts of the analysand and the supervisand as well as the dynamics of transference and countertransference in analysis and supervision. The important aim of the article is not the search for an ideal and universally applicable rule for vacant sessions but rather the analysis, by means of the context-related method, of the themes, beliefs and conflicts emerging in these special relationships, which in turn allows individual insights and suitable ways to approach the topic of the handling of vacant sessions and related fees.     

Leadership in community mutual support groups for mental health: A qualitative case study from the leaders' perspective

This study explores the experience of leadership of member‐led community‐based mental health mutual support groups. Recent research has documented factors that affect these groups, including leader well‐being, but little is known about the experience of leadership at the individual level. We aimed to understand more about the experience of leadership and how leading members conceptualise their roles. Individual semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 14 leaders of a community mental health mutual support group in England and thematically analysed. Three themes were identified through which leading members conceptualised their roles and group dynamics: (a) “It's a family”; (b) professional values; and (c) working as a team. These knowledge frameworks appeared to influence leaders' well‐being and conceptualisations of their role. The potential impact of this on group stability is discussed. Recommendations are made that group and individual‐level processes be considered together in future research in mental health mutual support contexts due to their interconnected nature.     

Creatively Intelligent: Post-Industrial Organizations and Intellectually Impaired Bureaucracies

Today's successful organizations function much like creatively intelligent, individual brain-mind systems. Unfortunately, many of the bureaucratic organizations we inherited from the industrial era function like individual minds of lesser intelligence. A metaphorical comparison of our organizations with the human brain-mind system illuminates organizational configurations and behaviors that promote success in today's turbulent economic and sociopolitical conditions. Both the creatively intelligent post-industrial organization and the highly developed human brain-mind are integrated clusters of dynamically evolving subsystems. Their functional dynamism enables them to perceive patterns in chaos, and to create effective long-term plans derived from those patterns. Imagine the organization in which you work as a giant brain. The human brain-mind system consists of a number of subsystems that work together to produce our thoughts, feelings, and actions. In a similar way, most of our institutions and businesses consist of departments that work together to create and distribute products or services. A wide variety of thought processes and behaviors are common to both the human brain-mind and the typical organization. Some of these include planning, analysis, abstract thought, emotional responses, ritualistic behaviors, and creative idea generation. A creatively intelligent person produces and integrates a blend of these thought processes and actions that is best suited to success in his or her environment. In a similar manner, today's successful organizations generate optimal blends of thought processes and actions that enable them to flourish in the midst of uncertain conditions. We can identify opportunities for greater organizational creativity and efficiency by using a brain metaphor to analyze the nature of today's most effective organizations. This paper compares the human brain-mind system to the organizations that are surviving and thriving in today's turbulent socioeconomic climate. There are some remarkable parallels. In many ways, today's most effective organizations closely mirror the functioning of the optimally developed human brain-mind. Similarly, our least effective organizations operate much like individual minds of lesser creative intelligence. The brain metaphor suggests that, in today's post-industrial organizational climate, some institutions and businesses are suffering from brain damage while others are on their way to becoming creatively intelligent geniuses.     

Organizational response to recommendations based on a study of stress among correctional officers

A study was recently commissioned by the South Australian Government to study the nature and sources of stress among correctional (prison) officers. The paper reports on the key variables found to have significant predictive effects on strain (a composite measure comprising psychological distress, physical ill-health symptoms, job dissatisfaction, and work-home conflict). These included demographic variables (length of service, finances), personal variables (negative affectivity), work environment variables (work role ambiguity, institutional relationship concerns, inmate concerns, worktime concerns, low autonomy, and low involvement), and emotional suppression. Recommendations were formulated including: the appointment of a full-time mental health counselor, organizational and individual strategies aimed to improve supervisor support and management training, greater participation in organizational decision making, and post-shift debriefing. It was also suggested that in selecting correctional officers those displaying high levels of negative affectivity should be screened out. Finally, it was recommended that intervention should target the most vulnerable individuals, including shiftworkers, officers who had been employed in the organization the longest, officers currently on stress leave and officers, who have previously been on stress leave and have returned to work. The paper reports on the organizational response to the recommendations and the implications of the study are discussed in the context of ongoing surveillance and evaluation of the impact of intervention strategies.     

When Do Employees Identify? An Analysis of Cross‐Sectional and Longitudinal Predictors of Training Group and Organizational Identification1

Organizational research has shown the impact of organizational identification on employees' attitudes and behavior, and its relevance for economic success ( Haslam, 2004 ). Furthermore, the necessity to differentiate levels of identification within organizations has been emphasized ( van Knippenberg & van Schie, 2000 ). Little is known, however, about predictors of different identification levels within organizations and their influence on the development of identification. In a longitudinal study with training groups of flight attendants, we investigated how foci of identification (training group, organization) were differentially predicted by cross‐sectional and longitudinal variables. Interpersonal attraction related to training group identification, whereas professional motivation related to organizational identification. Furthermore, expected job circumstances and professional motivation were longitudinal predictors for training group identification and organizational identification, respectively.     

组织成员地位的形成及影响机制

组织成员地位通常是指组织内个体受组织其他成员尊重和钦佩的程度,是近些年备受关注的一个心理学构念。虽然组织成员地位与权力、阶层、面子、基于组织的自尊等概念具有一定的关联性,但它们之间存在着明显的界限。组织成员地位主要受到外在显性因素(形体特征、人口统计特征)、内在心理因素(人格、认知、情绪、行为)以及神经生理因素(睾酮激素、皮质醇激素)的影响,并能够对组织成员的认知、情绪、行为和绩效产生显著的影响。未来研究应当进一步区分组织成员地位的维度,探索组织成员地位的生物学基础和文化差异,关注组织成员地位的动态演化及其后果,并检验团队和组织层面地位分布的作用机制。     

Envisioning human service organizations free of microaggressions

Microaggressions refer to verbal or non-verbal communications that invalidate those with non-dominant group identities across all dimensions of human diversity. Within human service organizations (HSOs), microaggressions may lower therapeutic alliance, reduce retention, and result in negative outcomes. While understanding the type, frequency, and damaging impact of microaggressions are useful and well established in research, less is known about the organizational policies, practices, behaviors, and values needed to reduce or eradicate microaggressions within human service contexts. Utilizing three focus groups and four individual interviews with adults who received services from HSOs, this qualitative study explored: What would HSOs need to learn, practice, and believe in order to be free of microaggressions? Sixteen participants reported on the provider's knowledge and behaviors, organizational environment, and institutional characteristics needed to create an organization free of microaggressions. Limitations of existing approaches and implications to develop more equitable practices within HSOs are discussed.