ABSTRACT
Systems psychodynamics analyses the inter-relationships of boundaries, roles, structures and organisational design, work culture and group processes. This approach selectively interprets the overt, covert and dynamic relationships of the client organisation and the work groups that comprise it. The focus is on how authority is psychologically distributed, exercised and enacted. This chapter considers attitudes, beliefs, phantasies, core anxieties, social defences, patterns of relationships and collaboration and how these influence task performance. Systems psychodynamics focuses on how unwanted feelings and experiences are split off and projected onto other individuals and groups that then carry the unwanted feelings on behalf of the organisation. Crossing an organisational boundary into a client's system is a point for analysis of boundary-related issues, the assessment of which provides information about authority in the organisation; how it is delegated; sub-system dependency and autonomy; clues about the nature of the request for a consultation; organisational resistance to intervention and change. The key educative task is ‘insight’ into the psychodynamics or covert processes as well as the structural properties of the system in the organisation. Working with and in the transference is crucial, involving thoughts, feelings and phantasies in the client/consultant relationship. Systems psychodynamics consultancy aims to understand organisational life that is outside the client's awareness.
