Referents
- Labor Abuse Reactive catharsis Therapeutic communication Conflict management Social Responsibility Corporate Governance
December 2003: A Japanese citizen decides to take his boss hostage for several hours in the office of a busy Tokyo business building. The subject once wielded the back wages and the frequent deceptions to which he was a victim by the organization as a cause of his action, decides to self-immolate himself causing the death of himself and his superior.
January 2004: An administrator of a farm in the municipality of Cota - Colombia. He decides to end the life of his boss by giving him a round of shots and later supplying him with a lethal dose of machetes. The subject waited at the crime scene to be detained by the police, at whose arrival he used the superior's ill-treatment as the reason for the event.
These are just two cases of what world public opinion sees in the media on a daily basis and where the accumulated tensions lead people to carry out violent acts in organizations, either towards themselves or others.
Throughout 2005, international newscasts were filled with self-immolations, suicide attacks, hostage-taking and other signs of the neurosis of terrorism.
And it is that while a part of the world qualifies for a high standard of living and wealth is centered in a few hands or countries, the rest of the world watches with anguish as their levels of poverty and pauperization grow.
This inequality generates tensions that hinder the work of the corporate world by creating unstable economies with low levels of consumption.
Reactive thinking, fear and catharsis
The stress of the contemporary world has generated certain urban psychological trends triggered either by the pressures of the free market or by the marked growth of poverty.
We see the citizen of today subjected to Darwinian paradigms where he is subjected to the law of the fittest. In this frame of reference, the human being resorts to his innermost survival instincts and opts for desperate options.
However, this type of trend seems to be responding to what we could call "reactive thinking" where the person deduces his reality as a reaction to it and not in a willing and prepared way.
Apparently this reactive thinking is deep in the brain in what we call the "reptilian brain" which guards our most animal instincts, unreasonable reactions. There is for example our survival instinct.
Some of the characteristics of this reactive thinking are:
- Tendency to find no way out and to be left without options. Feeling violated and defensive. Seeking to establish justice from his point of view. There is only one truth and he has it. The person feels that if he does not act violently he will not be heard. guilt and punishment as the only ways to strike a balance.
Reactive Catharsis:
Literally the word catharsis means "to clean", it comes from the Greek "catharsis" which means purification of the passions of the mind, its general definition indicates that it is a "discharge of ideas, thoughts and repressed material from the unconscious, accompanied by an affective emotional response and relief".
In psychology it is considered a way to release tensions and express emotions either reactively (instinctive and generally aggressive) or proactively, when we express creative tensions that allow us to develop and fulfill ourselves.
The term was taken up in 1895 thanks to the work of Freud and Brauer, who used it to refer to the therapeutic release of emotions that caused fear or anxiety.
For Fernández Collado catharsis "it is a liberating process of disturbing emotional tensions, through the verbal expression or manifestation of feelings in attitudes."
It is related to bringing to the conscious repressed emotions, disturbances and conflictive events. Thus, the process of catharsis can be presented in two ways, one where tensions become pressure and the other where tensions are released through language (verbalization), diluting, thanks to the process of expression, the tension generated on an emotional level.. That is to say:
1.) Uncertainty ® anxiety / fear ® catharsis or, uncertainty, 2.) anxiety / fear ® liberation through communication and language.
The emotional signs associated with catharsis are generally crying, tremors and the feeling of not knowing what decision to make. These types of emotions can be associated with the feeling of achievement (proactive catharsis) such as winning the Academy Oscar, or a sports medal or a representative economic award, as well as when we feel cornered and generate aggressions towards ourselves or those who love us. surround. (Reactive Catharsis).
Environments and situations that generate reactive catharsis:
Among other situations that can generate reactive attitudes are:
- People exposed to heavy work. Economic pressures. Pressures that affect their integrity. Long hours of work or excessive tiredness. Frustrations. Sensations related to severe pain.
Uncertainty, communication and change
In the case of uncertainty, the lack of information can generate feelings of threat and unleash defensive actions in the form of catharsis where the person intends to regain control of his environment and safety.
According to author Meryle Gellman in her document "The Confidence Quotient", "insecurity creates feelings of anxiety, ineptitude, jealousy, envy, uncertainty and fear, corrodes our self-esteem and prevents us from reaching our goals, leaving us depressed and dissatisfied "
At the level of internal communication, discomfort can occur due to two phenomena of lack of communication:
1. That the person does not have spaces to communicate, or is not allowed to communicate: In this case the person feels Oppressed.
2. That the person is not taken into account as a recipient of messages, that they are not allowed to express themselves, or that our expression is not taken into account. In this case the person feels Excluded.
In every human being there is the latent need to be heard as a sign of their existence. It is a need to communicate, as a reflection of the need to be part of the world, to verify that it exists and occupies a space in the social universe in which it operates.
It is a certain need to know that we exist by knowing or feeling perceived by others. It is an innate need to express yourself, where ideas produce energy and that energy is released through communication and action. When that energy cannot be released, it presses and stresses the person.
The man feels severely limited when his communication is difficult, when he cannot express himself to relate positively with his surroundings.
On the one hand, it should be remembered that being deprived of information generates catharsis since it awakens our survival instinct by evoking fear of the unknown and evoking feelings of threat and risk.
On the other, lying and dishonesty, as other ways of depriving the person of true information, are also assumed to be disrespectful, who perceives them (As the document Communication, an organizational point of view points out) takes them as an insult. to his intelligence and a violation of his confidence.
The loss of information is taken as an exclusive attitude against which the excluded assume an attitude of rejection and assume the position of the marginalized. This resentment sooner or later will become noticeable and visible through internal expressions that reflect it either by demonstrating disagreement or demanding respectful actions verbally or in more delicate cases by means of physical actions of force.
What does the rfi do and what is it for?
The Reactive Factor Index is nothing more than an organizational climate measurement that allows us to establish how reactive an environment is and how willing people linked to an organization are to generate a conflict process, whether at the level of group or individual level.
This measurement of reactive attitudes allows the organization to know or predict the reactions of the publics with which it interacts (the community, the workers, society, etc.) and serves as an indicator of good governance by being able to establish at what time or why their actions generate a nonconformity and how dangerous that nonconformity can be for the organization.
Bibliography
Schvarstein, Leonardo. The social intelligence of organizations. Paidos.
Shwartz, Peter. When good companies misbehave. Granica.
Communication in organizations. Fernández Collado Carlos. Threshing. Mexico DF. 1991.
The confidence quotient. Gellman Meryle. Grijalbo. Madrid. 1992
Communication, an organizational point of view. Ramos, Carlos. Threshing. 1991.
