Do Organisations Have Minds?

Can a school or workplace be said to have an unconscious? Can you psychoanalyse an institution?

Psychologists are used to thinking about the individual’s ability to function within social groups and to analysing group behaviour by considering a group as a aggregate of individuals. More recently, however, academics from a number of disciplines have begun to apply ideas from psychology to social entities themselves. Could a school or workplace be said to have an unconscious, or a neurosis or some other dysfunction? So some psychosocial researchers have suggested. Does this approach challenge our idea that the individual must be the atomic unit of analysis in social and political matters, or do they merely invent a psychological subject where none exists? And what should we make of the use of (now highly controversial) psychoanalytic theory by some researchers?
The discussion will be introduced and led by Dr Caroline Pelletier, a lecturer at the Institute of Education where she is, among other things, the course leader for the MA in Psychosocial Studies and Education.

Register to tell a friend about this lecture.

Comments

If you would like to comment about this lecture, please register here.

©2003-2006 Niminim Limited. Created by

Any ad revenue is entirely reinvested into the Lecture List's operating fund