An Introduction to Systems Psychodynamics: Consultancy Research and Training

332 Pages·2021·11.984 MB·English

by  David Lawlor, Mannie Sher

An Introduction to Systems
Psychodynamics
This book provides an introduction to systems psychodynamic theory and
its application to organisational consultancy, research and training, outlining
systems dynamics methods and their historical and theoretical developments.
Systems Psychodynamics is an emerging field of social science, the bound-
aries of which are continually being refined and re-defined. The ‘systems’
designation refers to open systems concepts that provide the framing per-
spective for understanding the structural aspects of organisational systems.
These include its design, division of labour, levels of authority, and reporting
relationships; the nature of work tasks, processes and activities; its mission
and primary task and the nature and patterning of the organisation’s task and
sentient boundaries and the transactions across them. This book presents a
critical appraisal of the systems psychodynamics paradigm and its application
to present-day social and organisational difficulties, showing how a holistic
approach to organisational and social problems can offer a fresh perspective
on difficult issues. Bringing together the theory and practice of systems psy-
chodynamics for the first time, this book provides an examination of the
systems psychodynamics paradigm in action.
This book gives an accessible and thorough guide to understanding and
using systems psychodynamic ideas for analysts, managers, policy makers,
consultants and researchers in a wide range of professional and clinical settings.
David Lawlor, Professional Partner, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations,
specialising in research and consultancy practice; co-director, Organisational Con-
sultancy: Working with the Dynamics; Visiting Lecturer, Tavistock and Portman
NHS Trust; Group Relations consultant; Formerly, Head, Social Work Discipline,
Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust; Principal Consultant, Tavistock Consultancy.
Mannie Sher, Principal Social Scientist, Tavistock Institute of Human Rela-
tions; Formerly, Director, Group Relations Programme; Formerly, Board
Member, International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations
(ISPSO); Author, The Dynamics of Change: Tavistock Approaches to Improv-
ing Social Systems (2013); Co-Editor, Dynamics at Boardroom Level: A Tavis-
tock Primer for Leaders, Coaches and Consultants.
“The authors of this wonderfully comprehensive book invite us to
embrace systems psychodynamics to support our leadership, followership
and consultancy in organisations. It is essential reading for all who care
about understanding and solving the often complex and enduring people
and technical problems that exist in the workplace. It challenges us to be
curious about the unconscious, to allow ourselves to be affected by what
is going on - and not to move into action immediately.
Having previously worked with organisational role consultants in
a police force, I can testify that the systems psychodynamics approach
described in this book was transformational in the way that it opened
our eyes to the unconscious processes in our organisation. We saw, for
the first time, what was really going on under the surface, rather than
what was apparent above it. This book provides a complete guide. It is
both an in-depth analysis of the theories underpinning this approach to
organisational development, and a rigorous analysis of how consultants
and clients can use an understanding of unconscious group processes to:
generate ideas for change, test these ideas in practice, and evaluate the
results. Anyone interested in optimising the way the social and technical
systems in their organisation work and in their inter-organisational rela-
tionships should read this”.
— Stephen Otter,
QPM, ex Chief Constable and
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary
“Welcome to this comprehensive introduction to the world of Systems
Psychodynamics as a frame of reference for both understanding and con-
sulting to organizations of all kinds. The chapters co-authored by the
editors and the most original thinkers in the field offers the reader a rare
view of the field in its entirety and its essence. This book highlights the
challenges of joining the subjective world of experience, where thoughts
and feelings beneath the surface are often formative, with the objective
world of job and organization design. This task, as this most honest book
reveals, is by no means an easy one. But the gains from taking it up, are
incalculable. Thinkers and doers, academics and consultants: Read it and
learn!”
— Larry Hirschhorn,
PhD., Principal Emeritus, CFAR, Author,
The Workplace Within and Reworking Authority
“My training at the Tavistock changed the way in which I view organ-
isations and groups. It presented me with the wide spectrum of colours
that exist in real organisational life that once seen cannot be ignored and
allowed me to see the true pictures painted by the psychodynamics of
organisational life and group relations. This book opens up the history
and presence of the work of the Tavistock Institute. Not many people
know about the history of the Institute and its influence on the terms
and ideas that we take for granted, organisational development being one
of them, but it might be a revelation to many to note the deep history
of Tavistock thinking and doing and its impact on many systems and
organisations. In some ways, the history of the Tavistock is the history of
organisational thinking and how it relates to what we know of the mind.
There are big ideas in this book presented in a way that is both accessi-
ble and illuminating. The Tavistock continues to punch well above its
weight. The story of this book and its intended volumes explains why”.
— Lord Victor O Adebowale,
MA, CBE, Visiting Prof. and Chancellor,
University of Lincoln, Chair, NHS Confederation

An Introduction to Systems
Psychodynamics
Consultancy Research and Training
David Lawlor and Mannie Sher
With contributions from David Armstrong, Leslie Brissett, Halina
Brunning, Susan Long, Juliet Scott, Philip Stokoe, Mark Stein and
Heather Stradling
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 David Lawlor and Mannie Sher
The right of David Lawlor and Mannie Sher to be identified as authors of
this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-02017-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-02015-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-18150-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003181507
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Homage: Dr Eric Miller (1924–2002) and
Albert Kenneth (Ken) Rice (1908–1969)
Eric Miller
The book in this series is dedicated to the memory of Eric Miller through
whose hands innumerable groups of people passed, seeking to benefit from
his wisdom and experience of complex group, organisational and social pro-
cesses. These people acquired deep understanding from Eric, who had a gift
for translating complex multi-layered ideas and concepts into useful practical
tools. Talking to Eric was a sacred experience leading to the scales falling
from one’s eyes and relief from exasperation.
At an advanced age, one looks back and ponders the confluence of certain
events occurring at the right time. I arrived at the Tavistock Institute in 1971
to work in the Adult Department of the Clinic. Then, and for the following
four years, Eric Miller was an enigmatic figure who inhabited the third floor –
seen but hardly conversed with. For a junior trainee at the Clinic, there
was a class of people about whom one heard a lot, but seldom crossed paths
with, until I attended my first Leicester conference and then there he was,
the Director, rather awe inspiring in his ability to listen, to contain and to
offer insightful thoughts which were often delivered with wry humour that
made one think about the relationship between the ‘I’ and the group that the
moment before had lain slightly out of reach, beyond one’s understanding. At
other moments, he appeared on cue, to assist one’s group (in the IG) to offer
the idea that all parts of the system, including our own, are part of the total-
ity of the learning organisation, and that we might want to experience the
fullness of our participation. Our perspectives were changed, our defences
lowered, and our group emboldened to take risks in the name of learning.
Instead of following an academic career in social anthropology, Eric
became increasingly interested in the problems of people and organisations.
He was a fine teacher and mentor, basing his approach on deeply held values
of imparting skills to others so that the legacies of the Tavistock Institute and
knowledge of organisational change and social improvement would pass to
the next generation. Eric’s view was that the field involved very hard work;
he was critical of attempts to imbibe the learning without the pain and rig-
our of genuine maturity in managing the boundary between the one’s inner
world and the realities of the external environment. Over the years, Eric
worked as a consultant in a wide variety of organisations – steel mills, an
airline, a Church of England diocese, the water sector in Mexico, hospitals,
residential homes, and schools.
Eric played a big part in numerous international development projects –
the calico mills in India, rural development in Mexico. And of course, he
was the director of the group relations programme for many years providing
experiential learning opportunities for thousands of leaders, managers, clini-
cians and technical experts on the dynamics of groups and systems and on the
impact they had on the way individuals took up their roles in their organisa-
tions. Eric and Ken Rice worked together in developing the group relations
training programme. Eric was convinced of the value in enabling individuals
to find authority within themselves; to question assumptions; and to extract
themselves from irrational situations imposed by a group. Eric also helped
to establish other institutions, including group relations organisations, in
America, Finland, Denmark, Israel, India, South Africa and elsewhere. Eric
was a co-founder of OPUS (an Organisation for Promoting Understanding in
Society), a small educational charity which helps individuals recognise their
relatedness to society, which today is chaired by his wife, Olya Khaleelee,
with whom he often collaborated.
Eric Miller was a prolific writer and clear exponent of consulting practice.
His more widely read books include Systems of Organisation (with Ken Rice,
1967) and From Dependency to Autonomy (1993). Nearly all the chapters in
this series contain references to the work of Eric Miller; the people whose
interviews appear in the 3rd book attest to the wide influence Eric had with
many around the world.
Albert Kenneth (Ken) Rice
Ken Rice went to Nottingham High School, where he won an exhibition
scholarship to Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. He read mathematics at
Cambridge University, but halfway through his studies he abandoned math-
ematics for anthropology. After university, Ken joined the Colonial Service
and served in Kenya for several years before returning to Britain to work as
assistant general manager at Lewis’s, Birmingham; then personnel manager at
G.A. Harvey & Co. in London. From 1945 to 1948, he was a deputy director
of the Industrial Welfare Society in London (now The Work Foundation).
He married Marjorie Ansell in 1935 and had two daughters.
Ken Rice joined the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in 1948 and
worked there until he died in 1969. It was at the Tavistock that Ken developed
his method of critically analysing society, in particular addressing problems
facing managers in industrial settings. This culminated in his work in India
for the Sarabhai firm at Ahmedabad, where, in a few months, he replanned
and reorganised the weaving section of the enterprise, increasing its produc-
tivity by 300 percent. This experience was recorded in his book, Productivity
and Social Organization: The Ahmedabad Experiment.
Ken Rice worked with Eric Miller on several projects, including consul-
tancy to an airline, a public school, the clergy, and for the Prison Commission.
Out of this work he developed his ideas about group relations. Ken Rice
directed the Tavistock Institute’s group relations programme and training
events, including the Leicester Conference, from 19xx to 1969. He later
wrote a book about his experiences running Leicester, called Learning for
Leadership: Interpersonal and Intergroup Relations.
News of Rice’s work in group relations and the original ideas in his
book The Enterprise and its Environment spread to the United States. He was
employed by the Washington School of Psychiatry for a time; and was later
asked to reorganise the Yale University Medical School. He directed the first
group relations conference in the United States at Holyoke in 1965.
Ken Rice died suddenly on 15 November 1969, aged 61. His memorial
service included tributes from his friends and colleagues, including Jock
Sutherland, who described Rice’s work at the Tavistock: “Ken’s first endeav-
our with us was to create a small group of senior representatives of industry
and administrators which met under the leadership of Wilfred Bion. Bion’s
influence on Ken remained a profound one and it established his future
interest in group experience as a method for the personal development and
understanding of those in leadership roles. His pioneering work in this field –
perhaps one with quite remarkable potential for the educational needs of
our society – was rewarded in the most gratifying way possible, its adoption
by a wide range of institutions including industry, government departments
and the clergy”. The A.K. Rice Institute in the United States was set up by
Margaret Rioch, Eric Miller and other colleagues in memory of Ken Rice
and to continue the work he had started in America.