ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with Social Defence theory and outlines the part anxiety plays in the work of an organisational consultant. Anxiety and its manner of containment can affect human performance levels. Defences, which arise as a means of coping with anxiety, can manifest in groups, and collective defences can become organisational ways of life, blocking change and learning. Anxiety can originate in the personal history of individuals, the demands of the task or the demands of the client group or the wider social system. Boundary management can contribute to the containment of anxiety. The chapter also explores introjection and introjective identification, in which individuals take attributes of other people into themselves, forming part of their inner worlds, as well as projection and projective identification in which individuals place attributes of themselves into others, forming part of their external and social reality.
