Abstract
This article examines the concept of the analytic third in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically informed organizational change. The analytic third is often defined as the psychological (triangular) space between self and other, subject and object, fantasy and reality – the third dimension that emerges from two persons fully engaged in the exploration of unconscious meanings, reasons, motives and actions. In neo-Kleinian object relations, it is viewed as the intersubjective dimension of transference and counter-transference, or the emergence in analytic work of the observation and experience of “I-as-subject” and “Me-as-object” (Ogden, 1994). The analytic third is what we create when we make genuine contact with one another at a deeper emotional level of experience whether in dyads, groups, communities, or organizations. It might be understood as akin to but not synonymous with Winnicott's (1971) notion of the transitional and potential space, where culture, play, creativity and imagination, reside. A case illustration is provided to better articulate the nature of the analytic third in the processes of observing, participating, and intervening in organizations.
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Notes
The author wishes to acknowledge the clarification in this instance of one of the anonymous PCS reviewers.
This notion of surrender to the emergent third comes closer to what I imagine to be Winnicott's conception of the true and authentic self in contrast to the false and compliant self.
You might say that with the concept of the third in relational psychoanalysis 1+1=3.
The third position may remind some of H.S. Sullivan's (1953) technique of counter-projection where the projected image is placed momentarily outside the dyad so that it can be viewed with some degree of psychological distance.
Projective identification involves the creation of unconscious narratives (symbolized both verbally and nonverbally) that involve the fantasy of evacuating a part of oneself into another person. This fantasied evacuation serves the purpose of either protecting oneself from the dangers posed by an aspect of oneself, or of safeguarding a part of oneself by depositing it in another person who is experienced as only partially differentiated from oneself (Ogden, 2004, p 187).
Bion abstracted the model of the relationship “container-contained” from a particular aspect of projective identification, which afforded further insight into this mechanism. According to this model, the infant projects a part of his psyche, especially his uncontrollable emotions (the contained), into the good breast-container, only to receive them back “detoxified” and in a more tolerable form (Grinberg et al., 1993).
What I am referring to here as “an expanding potential space” is the depth of experience, insight, and self-consciousness that comes from a good enough holding environment.
This has also been true for the study of organizational change from both cognitive and psychoanalytic perspectives. The notion of organizational learning, double-loop learning, reflective practice, and reflective inquiry represent this trend. In particular, see Argyris and Schon (1978) and Diamond (1993).
See Freud's essay on “On the Unconscious” (SE XIV, 161) particularly his discussion of the various meanings of the unconscious and the topographical point of view (Gay P. (ed.) The Freud Reader(1989), pp. 572–584).
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Diamond, M. Organizational Change and the Analytic Third: Locating and Attending to Unconscious Organizational Psychodynamics. Psychoanal Cult Soc 12, 142–164 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.pcs.2100116
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.pcs.2100116