ABSTRACT
Organizational formations and cultures in the twenty-first century are in rapid and radical evolution. In British public sector contexts, the influence of neoliberal market ideologies and practices, encapsulated by New Public Management theory, may be a dominant transnational force intersecting with other local and national traditions and trends. Isabel Menzies Lyth's original thesis about the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety was itself developed under specific professional and historical circumstances, and it is also imbued with particular psychoanalytic theoretical presuppositions. The nature and sources of the anxieties with which front-line staff and human service managers must contend have evolved to include a powerful range of extra-organizational forces and pressures. This chapter proposes that the meaningful application of her ideas to contemporary human and public service organizations requires considerable development of the precepts shaping the founding thesis. It draws upon the findings of a small-scale ethnographic empirical study of front-line child protection services.
