I remember in my student days, when I was a furious defender of Lacanian psychoanalysis, that talking about his insertion in the business world was sacrilege. It involved something like selling the soul to the devil himself, or wanting to insert a circle into a perfect square. “Im po si ble” both teachers and students recited in chorus. However, I realized from the beginning of my professional activity that this connection was not only possible but also a fact: It existed beyond prejudice.
What is valid to clarify with respect to one and the other, that the former has an important theoretical corpus, which implies in itself a multiplicity of concepts linked together giving it internal coherence. On the other hand, being a centennial clinical method, it achieved a much greater evolution and trajectory than the second.
One more last but not least in this article I will take Peter Drucker's definition for “management”: “It is a multipurpose body that manages a business and manages managers and manages workers and work”. This is equivalent to relating psychoanalysis to all the people who give life to companies on a daily basis and to those in charge of analyzing both: subjects and organizations.
1. Desire and Motivation
Desire in psychoanalysis is a key concept, without which all its theoretical scaffolding cannot be sustained. To speak of desire is to speak of man as subject. It implies thinking of a primordial failure, which gives rise to it and constitutes someone who is lacking in things. A subject of the unconscious, who will try to cover that hole throughout his existence.
That initial helplessness of the barely infant, who makes him one hundred percent dependent on another, is the origin in the real of what will later find its expression in the words: “The starting point of psychoanalysis is that man is a living being, but a living being who speaks, which has enormous consequences. Language transforms the human being in the deepest part of himself, transforms him in his affections, in his needs, transforms him even in his body. Indeed, as soon as they come into the world, the human offspring is captured by a structure that pre-exists it. This structure is that of language. From this capture through the language network, the relationship with his own body and with that of others, will no longer be a purely natural relationship (…) Desire, in Freud's sense, unconscious desire, that desire that is always singular of a subject, and not characteristic of the species, is a desire that, unlike necessity, does not walk in the sense of survival and adaptation (…) it is an indestructible desire, a desire that does not you can forget because you are essentially unsatisfied. Unlike necessity, it is not a vital function that can be fulfilled, because in its very emergence it is coordinated with the function of loss ”.
On the management side, this permanent attempt in organizations to satisfy employees with their concerns; that he will only find calm but never total calm is feasible to be explained using the psychoanalytic construct of desire, which teaches the possibility of satisfying it but on the condition that it is only for a moment.
Good managers understand this perfectly, and seek to alleviate in some way that constant search for something better for their collaborators, knowing in advance and clearly that the goals and achievements to be achieved will be defeated in the medium term, having to search for others in a peremptory manner.
Currently there are many tools used for this purpose: Differential social work; Lunches, Vehicle and Mobile by the company; Flexible schedule; Family Day; Birthday; Pension plans; Annual bonuses and objective awards; Tailor made career plans, etc. And there is no doubt that all of them seek to get as close as possible to the well-being of the collaborator, being aware that their practical power will depend on their systematic renewal.
2. Nirvana Principle and Comfort Zone
The principle in question is a “term proposed by Barbara Low and collected by Freud to designate the tendency of the psychic apparatus to reduce to zero or, at least, to diminish as much as possible in itself any amount of excitation of external or internal origin. ” In the words of the Viennese: “Remember that we have conceived the principle that governs all psychic processes as a special case of the tendency to stability, by Fechner; thus, we attribute to the soul apparatus the purpose of reducing to nothing the sums of excitement that flow through it, or at least keep them to the minimum possible degree ”.
Although it does not fulfill the purpose of this writing, given the complexity of the Freudian concept, I am interested in highlighting the need to distinguish it from another: the death drive. Nirvana refers to the search for the absence of stimuli, to stability and not to destruction. “Barbara Low proposed (…) the beginning name of Nirvana, which we accept. But we hastily identify the pleasure-unpleasure principle with this Nirvana principle. If they are identical, all displeasure should coincide with an elevation, and all pleasure with a decrease, in the stimulus tension present in the soul; the principle of Nirvana (…) would be entirely at the service of the death instincts, whose goal is to lead the restlessness of life to the stability of the inorganic, and its function would be to alert against the demands of the life instincts - of the libido-, which seek to disrupt the life cycle to whose consummation it aspires. As well; this conception cannot be correct (…) Pleasure and displeasure (…) seem not to depend on this quantitative factor, but on a character of it,that we can only qualify as qualitative ”.
In the Nirvana Principle there is an absence of enthusiasm, of energy: There is a clear lack of desire. Regarding the comfort zone, there is no single definition and it is a more operational than theoretical concept. In other words, its maximum utility lies when applied to a specific reality. Alasdair proposes thinking of it as "… a state of behavior in which the person operates in a condition of 'neutral anxiety', using a series of behaviors to achieve a constant level of performance without a sense of risk." On this subject, I remember a graffiti that I saw when I was little and made a vivid impression on me, which continues to the present day: "… and they choose a soft grave", alluding to a kind of numbness or drugging of their own dreams. The sayings are also illustrative:"A bird in the hand is better than a hundred flying" or "It is preferable to know bad rather than to know good".
As can be seen, in the Freudian perspective and in the business environment there is evidence of a willingness of the human being to maintain his status quo. An inertia capable of inhibiting actions, significantly reducing the level of proactivity and vocation to generate change.
3. Resistance to change
Linked to the previous point, both psychoanalysis and management illustrate how difficult it is to adapt to changes, whether external or internal. Countless times we hear that people are resistant to them, and that before any modification we will be reluctant to incorporate it. The Freudian method even states that when faced with differences desired by the same subject, negative manifestations may follow, of discomfort, disgust or displeasure. In other words, not only is the individual reactive to external modifications, but also to those that directly involve him. "In life, even if one wishes with all his might to generate a change that he recognizes as convenient -for example, leaving a job or separating from his partner-,fear of the new and a lack of confidence in one's ability often creates anxiety, and anxiety causes resistance. All resistance manifests a struggle between having the will to change and not having it, between wanting and not wanting. However, despite the opposition, the unsatisfied hidden yearning does not cease to exist; and although we disguise it with words that justify the delay to change, the need for transformation continues to put pressure on the body and push towards consciousness, always ”.the need for transformation continues to put pressure on the body and push towards consciousness, always ”.the need for transformation continues to put pressure on the body and push towards consciousness, always ”.
One of the authors who, from social psychology, has been important in the reading of group phenomena, Pichon Rivière, says that “… resistance attitudes can be seen both on a social level, and on a group and individual level (and) create a situation stereotyped that prevents an active adaptation to reality (…) At an individual level, resistance manifests itself as people's responses to situations of change, always anxious, since both the individual and the community must face the two primary fears that cause a basic existential disturbance. In the case of small groups, resistance to change is expressed in terms of difficulties in communication and learning. The development of the group is hampered by the presence of the stereotype in group thinking and action ”..
Both at work and in our relationship life, when circumstances change, it seems that something is wrong and can cause discomfort. There are several reasons that explain this pseudo obstinacy, such as:
- Fear of loss, accompanied by depressive anxieties. For example, before a promotion, that we will no longer have the same relationship with our colleagues, or that the tranquility that accompanied the previous position will also disappear. Fear of attack: "I was transferred from section, surely it will be to control myself better." In this case, it is the paranoid anxieties that make their entrance, showing themselves with the intensity of fear and fear that, in extreme cases, can be paralyzing for the subject. Ignorance of the reasons that lead to change. It is known that a large part of companies lacks an oiled communication system. "I didn't know" or "No one told me" are phrases that one hears on a daily basis.To think that behind the causes put forward by Management there are hidden reasons. In this sense, a simplification of tasks for a job, could be read as an attempt to reduce staff in the short term. The incorporation of technology, transmitted as a benefit for employees, is also susceptible of being suspicious. Loss of locus of control. There are people who become stressed and confused when they feel they can lose control of a situation. If you think that from now on this faculty will be in someone else and not in her, it is expected that she will be rigid and impervious to modifications.
4. The symptom
"What is seen, but is not" or "We see the effects, not the causes." The symptom is defined from psychoanalysis as the expression of opposite forces.
Although Freud's ideas in this regard have undergone changes over time, his central notion has to do with a kind of struggle between tendencies that seek different things. From this failed transaction, a condition arises at the psychic level of which the person is only aware of the latter: of her anguish, sadness, inhibition or the repetition in her life of unpleasant situations such as successive love disappointments. "The symptom (…) is born as a compromise between two opposing instinctual or affective motions, one of which insists on expressing a partial drive or one of the components of the sexual constitution, while the other insists on stifling them."
Saying that the symptom comes instead of something else is equivalent to thinking that "… it becomes a significant barrier with which the subject tries to channel, metabolize, give meaning to that increase in drive tension experienced as a danger by the self (…) The self, in charge of repression, acts under the pressure of the restrictions imposed by the superego. When the satisfactions sought by the id conflict with the self, it represses and the symptom is formed. The symptom must contemplate the demands of the self and provide it with an advantage that prevents the instinctual satisfaction it carries from carrying the same destiny as its represented. Since the self cannot prevail, it reconciles with the symptom and incorporates it into its organization. Thus the ego obtains in the symptom a narcissistic satisfaction of which it was deprived,what Freud designated as secondary gain. " The subject, in an attempt to avoid excessive discomfort, generates his symptom.
Things also happen in organizations that nothing is known about, that are intended to be avoided, and are suffered. Example, the case of theft of merchandise by some employees. It is essential that this be approached as a symptom and not as a cause in itself. The implication of thinking things this way is to deeply question yourself about what is happening or happened and tried to cover up, hold back.
I like to think and use what Lacan said regarding psychosis, "what is not inscribed in the symbolic returns in the real" as a good way to illustrate the phenomenon of theft, but also applicable to drastic reductions in staff performance and other Similar.
All sensible circumstances, in the sense of significant, generate consequences for people and deserve to be processed through the word: dismissal of colleagues; unkept promises; Uninformed resignations or poorly paid collaborators are issues that, if they try to be hidden, may appear with another cover, overlapping or disguised as something else.
The unconscious at the individual level is analogous to what is not said at the organizational level. In both cases it is a reservoir of ideas, images, experiences, disjointed noises that, if not channeled through the healthy ways of the word, will be expressed in a painful way.
5. Sublimation and Creativity
Another healthy way of dealing with these unconscious tendencies is through the mechanism known as sublimation. "Freud uses the concept of sublimation in order to explain, from an economic and dynamic point of view, certain types of activities sustained by a desire that does not manifestly point towards a sexual end: for example, artistic creation, research intellectual and, in general, activities to which a certain society attaches great value. (…) This ability to replace the original sexual end with another end, which is no longer sexual but is psychically related to it, we call sublimation capacity ”.
For his part, the contemporary psychologist, father of the concept of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner says that the creative person solves problems regularly, develops products or defines new questions in a field, in a way that at first is considered new, but that in the end it becomes accepted in a complex cultural context.
There is no doubt that so-called lateral thinking or thinking "outside the box" are highly valued by companies and it is not an exaggeration to say that employees with these characteristics have more chances of development than conservatives. Finally, remember that all people are potentially creative due to the fact that their unconscious is present in all and as such the chance to sublimate.
6. Leadership
Freud was one of the pioneers in trying to explain why a group of people line up behind one. In his well-remembered book " Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Ego" he explains it using the concept of I dentification, which he defines as "The earliest exteriorization of an affective bond with another person(…) Secondly, it passes to replace a libidinous bond of object by the regressive way, by introjecting the object into the ego, so to speak; and, thirdly, it can be born from any community that comes to be perceived in a person who is not the object of sexual drives. The more significant that community is, the more successful the partial identification can be and thus correspond to the beginning of a new bond. We have already concluded that the reciprocal bond between individuals of the mass has the nature of an identification of this kind (through an important affective community), and we can conjecture that this community resides in the way of bonding with the conductor. " .
As can be read, the sense of community is a correlate of a special bond with the leader, understanding the latter in current terms.
Wanting to be like the leader is what unites people: “A mass (…) is a multitude of individuals who have put an object, one and the same, in the place of their ideal of the self, as a result of which they you have identified each other in your self. " That external object is the Leader.
From management, most of the authors indicate the clear need for the leader to be a role model for his collaborators. For example, Bass defines transformational leadership as “A process that occurs in the leader-follower relationship, which is characterized by being charismatic, in such a way that followers identify with and want to emulate the leader. It is intellectually stimulating, expanding the abilities of the followers; inspires them through challenge and persuasion, providing meaning and understanding. Finally, consider subordinates individually, providing support, guidance, and understanding. ”
Other authors establish: “Effective leaders are excellent role models (…) They are sensitive to the fact that their behavior will be observed by others and that this, in turn, will condition the behavior of their subordinates. (…) The example that a leader supposes has an extreme impact on the level of enthusiasm and motivation of an entire work group (…) People led by a good model are willing to make great efforts ”.
In the words of Rendón Velarde: "A great leader differs from others in his extensive use of personal example to model the behavior of his followers."
In this way, throughout the text, those that, from my point of view, configure the great coincidences between one and the other model have been revealed.
It is not about forcing things. It is about linking the desk with the field, theory with practice. Give fluidity to the rigid and the opportunity to think that the concepts were designed to be used and exploited.
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Alasdair AK White (2009) "From Comfort Zone to Performance Management". USA: White & McLean.
Taken from
Taken from
Freud, Sigmund "Delirium and dreams in W. Jensen's Gradiva, and other works" (1906-1908) Complete Works. Amorrortu Editores.
González Imaz, Marcelo. (2013) “Itinerary Magazine. Year 7, No. 14 ”Taken from
Lacan, J. (1955-56) “The seminary. Book 3: The psychoses ”. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Laplanche, Jean et Pontalis Jean-Bertrand (1996). "Dictionary of psychoanalysis". Barcelona: Paidós.
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Rendón Velarde, D. (2006) "The mystic of the leader". Mexico. Panorama.
