ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore the notion that organisations and individuals can, and do use, complacency as a defence against the recognition of the need for change. Complacency can occur in circumstances where there is a threat to the powerful identification with and belief in the ‘product’, or the service delivered. Organisational complacency occurs in circumstances where the conditions which gave rise to profit or influence change dramatically. Complacency, as a defence, has three principal characteristics. First, it misrepresents reality, and in so doing distorts relationships. Second, the special characteristics of complacency is the anxiety associated with the giving up of the privilege linked with success. Third, complacency because of its self-righteous quality is difficult to spot or interrogate partly because of its plausibility and partly because it mobilises the narcissism of the clinician or group consultant and thus colludes with the resistance to change in the group or patient.
