ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a traumatogenic process in a large integrated oil company in an industry made turbulent by world events during the final third of the twentieth century. It focuses on scapegoating as an expression of aggression associated with massification. The quality and intensity of scapegoating to maintain massification and the role suction of the women and their willingness to assume roles as scapegoats suggest that factors from the “social unconscious” of the broader society were imported into the company and fuelled the desire to “save” the company. The theory of incohesion as a basic assumption describes how groups and their members respond to traumatogenic processes. Trauma is classified as either strain, cumulative or catastrophic. The American public and the American oil industry suffered all three classes of trauma in the last third of the twentieth century when relations with Middle East oil exporting countries became vastly more difficult and oil became a weapon of politics.
