ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an organisational intervention in a psychiatric unit which treats and secures dangerous people. It shows how the overt competition between the custodial, rehabilitation, and medical treatment tasks avoid the primary risk of the enterprise in placing the physical and mental health and safety of the staff in jeopardy. Miller and Rice provide an invaluable map to think with, in their developing theory of the primary task as a survival task. Their understanding of the task performed by the organisational body, on behalf of its environment, creates a theory with which to explore organisations as open systems in a complex relationship of exchange with their environment. Professional aims describe the treatment and rehabilitation methods that are embodied in different professional roles, whether as manager, nurse, occupational therapist, psychologist, social worker, or psychiatrist. The difficulty for the supervisor as leader is to develop a reflective process that flies in the face of underlying group dynamics.
