ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a shift is taking place towards an anti-Oedipal orientation, in which the Times comes to function, loving those who have been deprived of love in the past and hating the father who has been the cause of that deprivation. It provides to validate the use of psychoanalytic theory by illustrating the way, as a theory of meaning, it can contribute to the cross-level analysis of organizations. For psychoanalytic theory, multi-level analysis is not a matter of finding causal relationships between different types of entities. The chapter looks at the Times with a focus upon the peculiar case of Jayson Blair, a reporter who was found to have been plagiarizing and fabricating material, and the Times’ treatment of him. As the “paper of record”, the New York Times has had a unique and important place in the structure of meaning in American society.
