The Professional Practice of Jungian Coaching

Corporate Analytical Psychology

Nada O'Brien, John O'Brien, Nada O'Brien, John O'Brien

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000164954
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Psicología
• Categoría: Psicología industrial y organizacional

O'Brien and O'Brien and their collection of international contributors introduce the historical and current theory and practice of Corporate Analytical Psychology. Uniquely and practically bringing Jungian ideas to the corporate world, the chapters discuss the increasing need for ethical corporations in the context of individuation and moral hazard, demonstrate how to manage and define complexes that inhibit creativity and productivity, and shows practitioners how to recognise and connect with symbols as an active and living manifestation of the personal and collective psyche. The book is illustrated with practical examples and case studies encountered by the authors during their 30 years of experience consulting the world's leading companies and institutions.

Part I

Corporations and psyche

Chapter 1

The corporate soul

Janis Maxwell

Author’s dreams

I am on the thirty-fifth floor of the tallest building in Baltimore. The building begins to shake and I know that a devastating earthquake is happening. I also know that the building will collapse. I grab white sheets, tie them together and lower myself to the ground. I run. I survive.

I am summoned to the basement of the company. Armed ninja-type soldiers, men and women, have taken the workers hostage and line them up. I ask colleagues, ‘what is going on?’ ‘We are being taken over by a Japanese army’, is the answer. ‘Just do what they tell you to do’. I look around and see ‘trust coupons’ on a chair. I know that these will be my ticket out.

Shifting realities

A few years after the dreams cited above, the Fortune 500 company that had been the pride of a city and a state for generations, and in which I was an executive officer, was acquired by an overseas company and subjected to asset stripping. This is a process of buying and dismantling companies, and selling the parts to achieve net gains. The previous CEO and upper management had lost sight of what a healthy organization should have been and had paved the way for the sale and dismemberment. It became a portrait of the disintegration of a corporation that had lost its way. It had lost its soul. On one level, the dreams seemed to have warned that the organization would be taken over by an alien energy and would not survive. In this respect, the dreams were personal but also had a collective meaning.

These dreams occurred before there was any indication that massive changes were about to take place in my world and in the corporate culture of which I was a part. They indicated a world of shifting realities where nothing was what it appeared to be. The maladies that followed in this organization and every organization with which it was affiliated became matters of great concern not only of their leaders, but to every person connected to them.

What happened then and since resulted in much soul searching by the many leaders who sought ways to adapt to the changing world. What had once been functional seemed to be caught in the currents of time and no longer worked in many cases. Taking into account not only a corporate view, but a universal world view, new paradigms were on the horizon. Leadership needed new ideas to meet the changing times, but old paradigms were difficult to change. What could have been the cause of such a dysfunctional situation which affected so many?

It seems that the connection between the body corporate, the spirit of the organization and its soul had been lost. Loss of soul and disconnection from the spirit that rules individuals and corporations contributed to loss of meaning, violence and disintegration. This has affected many of the institutions that have guided and supported culture to unimaginable heights in some parts of the world. Foundational beliefs have been shaken to the core. Perhaps a missed opportunity was the potential connection to a new paradigm.

My view is that caring for the soul of the individual parts of the corporate body is inextricably linked to the generation of profit and could actually increase it. It follows that individuals and world leaders must reflect on how to recover the soul. Some seem to unable to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ the coming age. Many seem to have no meaningful connection to the unconscious, to dreams or imagination which could point out the avoidable dangers and perhaps show alternative ways forward.

Idea of the corporate soul

What do we mean when we talk about the soul? It is an idea that is traditionally associated with religions, supported by the underlying myths and the archetypes embedded in them. It often seems that the word ‘soul’ has been ‘relegated to the fringes of the worldview, banished to the marginal existence of the private sphere or has otherwise disappeared altogether’ (Gieser 2005, p. 197). But today, many of the foundation myths of corporate culture, while not necessarily religious in nature, still suggest both the presence of a corporate soul and the dangers inherent in the soul’s journey.

Corporate culture is based primarily on the lure of the ‘bottom line’. A primary goal has been to take care of stockholders by delivering short term profit. This may now be changing in so far as more corporate leaders realise that the automatic drive for short term profit does not necessarily make a healthier organization. Companies such as Microsoft seem to see that taking care of the parts that contribute to their success is vital. For every corporate leader under the sway of greed who possesses a limited understanding of the wise use of wealth, there are others who contribute to making the world a better place. Companies that treat their employees well, making certain that they address the ‘bottom line’ of people, planet and profit, are more likely to be healthy enterprises, assured of success.

Since leaving the company and becoming a Jungian analyst, I have often thought about how a corporation is like an individual. In fact, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that corporations have legal rights and responsibilities called by some ‘corporate personhood’ (Torres-Spelliscy 2014). US courts have thus extended certain constitutional protections to corporations similar to those granted to individuals. What became obvious to me was that the concepts that C. G. Jung used to describe the individual psyche, the soul, were also applicable to organizations. In the corporate structure, one can imagine an ego, a Shadow, an Anima, an Animus and the higher organizing function, the Self (CW 9i). For example, the ego energy of the ruling conscious attitude can be seen in the leadership functions responsible for the health and well-being of the corporate structure and its constituent parts. These are usually formally represented by the CEO and executive team. For Jung, the centre was the Self, the organizing function of the psyche. When an individual or other organizational leader loses touch with that centre, disintegration starts to occur and the body begins to fall apart. Individuals in such an environment often become ill. Leaders who become disconnected from their soulful source of initial success run the risk of suffering neurosis or symptoms of disease. Sometimes they are described as the ‘walking dead’.

Recognising that behind the ego, there is an active organizing function which Jung called the Self, is important. H. G. Baynes (1940), in Mythology of the soul, illustrates the power of an organizing centre with reference to an example drawn from the insect world. Baynes tells the story of a species of termite in South Africa which consists of communities of thousands of individual termites. These insects, which are both blind and deaf, build architectural structures, make aqueducts to depths of 100 feet for water supply, make gardens for cultivation of fungus which are necessary for digestion and heat, repair walls and make structures which defend the community from invasion. There is no organ which could serve as a brain in which instinctual apprehension can reside. Yet, however distant the termites might be from the queen’s cell, the instant the queen is killed every member of this vast organization ceases work and dissolution begins. The power emanating from the queen cannot be conceived in concrete terms. There is no demonstrable path of communication. If a steel plate is driven through the termitary, so that one half is completely separated from the other, the highly coordinated activity goes on as if no obstacle were present. The queen has never performed any of these specialised activities of the sexless termites. Her life is confined and she is immobile in a cell from which she can never emerge. The workers and soldiers have no organs of generation. Therefore, the pattern of activities which they represent is not handed down by them. (Baynes 1940, pp. 754–755).

We might consider this analogous to Jung’s concept of the Self as a universal power which includes the physical world. Similarly, the corporate organism, be it an individual or an organization, is a psychic whole. The Self could also be described as the guiding energy that informs the ego. When thus guided and in harmony, these elements of the psyche, the soul, create a life of meaning and connection to the common good. When we speak of the corporate soul, we are speaking of business, economics, politics, religion and individuals. We are speaking of an entity that is held together and ruled by leaders who have the interest of the ‘body’ at heart and that rules with those factors in mind. In my experience, effective leadership understands the changing patterns and is open to guidance from dreams and synchronicities, and from those invisible spirits that lead into the future.

A healthy leader is critical for a healthy corporation. In mythology and fairy tales, the king represents the conscious ruling attitude. If the king is healthy, the kingdom thrives. If not, then the kingdom becomes barren. There are numerous tales about sick kings, where the land becomes barren, where nothing can live and thrive. In this respect, King Saul and Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical lore can be considered as examples of psychic illness. There also is the legend of King of Arthur and Holy Grail. These are all stories that provide guidance about what happens and what to do when leadership becomes sick and out of touch with the soul. The body (corporate) must be connected to the soul and the spirit to be healthy and to thrive.

Healthy corporations

What is a corporation? How would we describe its soul if we agree it should or does have one? As C. G. Jung and others have demonstrated, an individual human being is constituted of many parts which work together as a whole to function in a healthy way. The world soul, the Anima Mundi, operates in a similar way. According to several systems of thought, the world soul is an intrinsic connection between all living things on the planet, and relates to the world in much the same way as the soul is connected to the human being. Plato (1937) adhered to this idea which became an important continuity in most Neoplatonic systems. The belief that the world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence, a single visible living entity containing all other living entities which by their nature are all related, accords with Jung’s idea of the Self.

So how might we address these issues of loss of soul? Begg (1972) argues that there are three things that must come together to affect and transform culture: an archetypal aspect, an individual aspect and an historical aspect with its profound virtue of the human soul. When one of these is ignored, then the whole cultural structure suffers and eventually dies, as evidenced by the company in which I worked. The archetypal aspect is the energy behind the outer reality, the Zeitgeist, the structuring elements and the fuel for a meaningful life. Archetypes are the powers behind these realities. They manifest in accordance with the culture in which they appear. This aspect can be imagined as a war in heaven, for example, by St. Michael and his angels fighting the dragon, attempting to bring harmony to the world. In the soul, this battle is the urge toward wholeness, harmony and balance. The individual aspect is what carries this energy into the world. The historical aspect is especially important as much of the information that we need to connect body, soul and spirit has been lost in the mists of time.

The prevailing myth that has supported the corporate soul has been much like the fabled dragon that hoards its gold. It is hidden in the depths of a mountain or, in a modern manifestation, in offshore accounts, unavailable to support the soul, the body and the spirit of an organization. But perhaps we can also imagine an Oriental dragon, a life-giving and a beneficent source of power.

Organizational psychologist Jerry Harvey (1988, 1999) writes about corporate life and what happens when an organization goes down a wrong road, losing its connection to soul and spirit. Its people become depressed. They are separated from something that has supported them emotionally and has provided meaning to life. Many become ill like the children who develop anaclitic depression as a result of early loss. If not reconnected to a source of emotional life (a mother symbol) within a short period, they can die or remain permanently injured in body and soul. A company that values its employees by providing them not only with material reward but also an environment where individual spirit and soul can unite with the corporate body to become whole is a healthy corporation. Its parts work together for the common good, just as the different parts of the psyche work together with the different parts of the body to be a healthy human being. The dragon then becomes beneficent and life-enhancing.

Theodore Abt (1989) indicates that man can handle many life issues, but cannot tolerate a meaningless life. He believes that the soul and dreams that issue from a soul place cannot be ignored in development planning. He believes that messages from the unconscious must be taken concretely in many instances:

I hope to make it evident that the hinterland of our soul, our emotional background, is a reality that absolutely must be given its full due when we set to work on collective problems. If this is not done, the background of our soul will make its demands felt in the form of all sorts of irrational disturbances and spiritual epidemics.

(Abt 1989, p. 19)

He advocates a more holistic approach in which we are connected to each other, to the earth and to the universe. We no longer live in a bounded world. The internet has connected us to each other, to the world and to the depths of the universe in unimaginable ways, both creative and destructive. It could be that the internet has changed the prevailing myths that hold the archetypal energies that organise life on this planet. Perhaps it is possible to progress, to go forward in a soulful way, if we become aware of the reality of the soul.

Bottom line

What is the ‘bottom line’? Could it be that we must develop a new world view that recovers forgotten truths, and retrieves the soul from the fringes of modern society? In my view, we must bring a more feminine view, being more receptive, creating a container that holds and bears life, and hearing and nurturing the voice from the unconscious. We can communicate this voi...

Índice

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: the untapped alchemy of organizations: a 21st-century vision for human development and organizational transformation within corporations
• PART I: Corporations and psyche
• PART II: Carl Jung’s analytical psychology and post Jungian research
• PART III: Corporate analytical psychology
• PART IV: Application of corporate analytical psychology: Jungian coaching and consulting
• PART V: Corporate analytical psychology ethics
• PART VI: Jungian work with institutions
• Index