Cross Boundary Solutions Ltd by Kevin Dixon

THE BODY OF THE ORGANISATION

AND ITS HEALTH

By Richard Morgan-Jones

-The Body of the Organisation and its Health

-Birth of the Body, Birth of the Mind, Birth of the Social

-Protomentality by Nuno Torres

-Group body, group skin

-Retainment of staff: Towards a Collective Work Ethic in Managing Presence and Absence

-Social stress related epidemic diseases: Failures in Emotional Containment by Nuno Torres

-Management of the risk of Re-cycling Trauma -Tackling Shamelessness Violations: Can Restorative Justice Meet the Case?

-Financial Bodies called to Account: Corporate risks of

carrying fear and greed on behalf of the body politic

by Kevin Dixon and Richard Morgan-Jones

-From Psycho-somatics to Socio-somatics: Health risks to

individual and organisational bodies in psychotherapy

BIC Code: Psychoanalysis & psychoanalytical theory (JCAF)

Using the frameworks of psychoanalysis, group relations, systemic organisational observation, consulting and research, this book explores the relationship between the health of the work force and the health of organisations. It seeks to do this through an exploration of experience that has three dimensions linked in a single matrix: the bodily, the emotional and the social. This exploration is inspired by Bion’s original idea of the protomental matrix from which the group dynamics of basic assumption mentality is derived, leading to his initial ideas about group diseases and their cures.

The first part describes the theoretical background to these ideas, exploring the “spirit” of the organisation that is embodied within a system whose health can be sought by thoughtful enquiry. It moves from psycho-somatics to sociosomatics. It traces the embodied nature of organisational systems. It extends the idea of the “organisation in the mind” (Armstrong) to include the “organisation under the skin”, using Anzieu’s metaphor of skin to describe protomental group boundary phenomena and their violations described in incohesion dynamics beyond Bion’s dependency, flight fight and pairing.

Part Two, the introduction and six chapters, provide an application of these tools for enquiry to social and organisational dynamics, revealed in collective diseases and attempted cures. It draws on the idea of health risks at bodily, emotional, organisational and social levels. It presents research and consulting covering the experience of going sick, social diseases, the risk of organisational systems recycling trauma, shameless violation and its restoration, the role of fi nancial institutions in managing fear and greed, and the health risks to practitioners and institutions in the psychotherapy profession.

Richard Morgan-Jones is an organisational consultant and

a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with a practice in Eastbourne,

UK. He is a member of the Organisation for Promoting the Understanding of Society (OPUS), the International Society

for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations (ISPSO), the

European Business Ethical Network (EBEN) and the Restorative

Justice Consortium (RJC). He directs Work Force

Health: Consulting and Research and is a qualified training

psychotherapist and supervisor at the London Centre

for Psychotherapy, member of the British Psychoanalytic

Council and a former chair of Psychotherapy Sussex.