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Can Psychoanalysis Be a Science?

  • This is a study of the social character of managers and staff at the U.S. ACTION Agency. The context of the study was a joint union-management work improvement program that took place in the U.S. ACTION Agency from 1977-80. The author, with others from the Harvard Project on Technology, Work and Character, was contracted by ACTION, to be a third-party researcher-consultant for the program. The methods of this study include in-depth interviews with 30 people, both managers and staff. The instrument for these interviews was an >interpretive questionnaire< originally developed by Erich FROMM to elicit both ethnographic and characterological information. Additional data were gathered through dialogues with individuals and office groups, and through participant observation. The findings of this study include a typology of five social character types at ACTION headquarters: sociable idealists, craftsman-idealists, political idealists, technical administrators and diplomat-administrators. The study discusses their adaptations to the organization of work, and how people of different social character types interact with each other around the work tasks, both productively and unproductively. This research demonstrates the importance of understanding local meanings, values, and motivations when planning organizational change. It is an example of using social character theory and participant research as significant methods for achieving such understanding.The theoretical framework for interpretation is Erich FROMM's theory of social character as adapted by Michael Maccoby for use in organizational change projects. FROMM's theory develops a typology of shared character syndromes functionally related to the socioeconomic and cultural environment; Maccoby develops empirical typologies of adaptations to work in each work setting, conceptualized and named through >participant research< with the people studied. Participant research creates new knowledge that can stimulate and support change in the workplace.

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Metadaten
Author:Miltiades Zaphiropoulos
Parent Title (English):International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Oslo (Scandinavian University Press) Vol. 10 (No. 2, June 2001), pp. 163-169.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2001
Release Date:2012/12/13
Format:PDF-scan upon request / PDF-Scan auf Anfrage
IdNo:Zaphiropoulos_M_2001
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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