Organizational Change and the Analytic Third

Abstract

Understanding the theory and practice of psychoanalytically informed organizational diagnosis and change requires a concept that captures the experiential nature of working in depth with organizations. The analytic third is one such helpful analytic concept. It accentuates the intersubjective dimension of the participant observer of organizational culture.

I suggest that the time has come for psychoanalytic theory to pay tribute to this third area, that of cultural experience which is a derivative of play. Psychotics insist on our knowing about it, and it is of great importance in our assessment of the lives rather than the health of human beings. (The other two areas are inner or personal psychic reality and the actual world with the individual living in it.)

D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality