This article describes an action research project concerning three workshops, each using a different socioanalytic methodology, which were held shortly after the beginning of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict in 2022. The participants were mostly native Russian speakers. The three methods were social photo-matrix, social dream-drawing, and social dreaming matrix. The goal of our research is to understand from these participants how and in what way their participation in these workshops helped them cope with the deeply unsettling experiences associated with this and subsequent world events. Our major overall finding, based on follow-up interviews, was the power and value of the group experience. Due to the realities of long distances between participants, all workshops were held online. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, participants found themselves better able to face and to bear the anxieties and deeply held concerns they were experiencing. These workshops will be described in detail, including our research findings on the value of these experiences. The article will conclude with further thoughts on the use and impact of these methods.

This study analysed the collective unconscious responses to the Covid-19 pandemic through ten social dreaming matrices (SDMs) conducted between September 2020 and June 2021. Hosted online by the Institute of Group Analysis, the SDMs provided a unique opportunity to access unconscious psychic reactions during a time of profound global disruption. Dreams were documented and examined using qualitative thematic analysis, identifying key motifs including death, isolation, shame, survival, and transformation. A clear emotional trajectory emerged, moving from early fragmentation and anxiety, through psychic confinement, to cautious adaptation and mourning. Symbolic figures such as pigs, the Queen, and faceless men captured shared anxieties about leadership, belonging, and survival. The findings highlighted how the SDMs served as a structured transitional space, enabling otherwise inaccessible fears, uncertainties, and desires to be expressed and processed. The study demonstrated the value of social dreaming as a research tool for understanding collective trauma, grief, and psychic adaptation during crisis.

This article aims to add some decolonising theoretical and practical scaffolding to our coaching and organisational consultancy practices. I hope to provide coaches and consultants with some conceptual tools to manage the myriad of complex issues related to working within diverse workforces and markets in the historic context of empire, colonisation, and slavery and the contemporary manifestation of these historic dynamics that are now present in the emergence over the last ten years of the alt-right populist movements who spout the most horrendous homophobic, misogynistic, and racist troupes from powerful online social media. The alt-right populist movements reflect a "location of disturbance" by way of a backlash to the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Left unaddressed, we risk turning a blind eye to such destructiveness, alienating and devaluing parts of our workforce by ignoring their lived reality over many generations. This article examines how a consultancy cycle aims to decolonise organisational and team dynamics, thereby mitigating the impact of these destructive dynamics and enabling more cooperative working practices. A failure to do so leaves organisations vulnerable to anti-task practices, which wastes the richness and creativity of diverse human resources.

In this article I develop a new understanding of the highly damaging revenge that is, on occasion, enacted by leaders. While writers and researchers in the field invariably argue that revenge is directed principally or exclusively towards the "other" who has caused one hurt, I take a different approach. Instead, drawing on the psychoanalytic school of Freud, Klein, and Bion, I argue that—as well as being experienced as the "other" who is hated—people may become targets for revenge because they unconsciously represent the "unwanted self" of the avenger. Revenge scenarios at Gucci and Lehman Brothers are examined. The contribution of this article is threefold. First, this article offers a new approach to the understanding of the leader's revenge and constructs a theoretical framework that identifies its main components. Second, this article contributes to the literature on leadership, and, third, it contributes to the literature on revenge.

On or around 24 January 2025, Listening Posts were conducted, mainly online, in twenty-two countries from five continents, yielding eighteen reports. The 2025 International Listening Posts (ILP) report highlights both continuities and discontinuities with the 2024 report with regard to the issues addressed and concerns relating to the international situation. In the context of "catastrophic change" in the international social, political, and economic landscape, we can say that we are currently experiencing a "globalisation of fears" that affects all countries, a tangible realisation of past nightmares and ghosts, and a veritable "escape from reality" that is considered too difficult to face. Furthermore, the divide between public and private life, which was already apparent in the 2024 ILP, is becoming increasingly pronounced. The tendency to retreat into a "happy bubble" of family, friends, and community is emerging as a genuine survival strategy.

This short article connects two experiences of the author: the engagement of a fashion lecturer, Anna König, to write about the meaning of fashion in one of Brunning's earlier books and the personal elaboration on the meaning of work by Alexander McQueen, British fashion icon. The author creates links between these occurrences and seeks new interpretation of McQueen's opus.

A practical psychodynamic understanding of how professionals experience and perform through the uncertainties of innovation may help organisational development practitioners better support executives navigating this specific leadership situation. This article presents observations from a novel leadership development approach building on the previously developed “innovation leadership map” theoretical model as a comparative method of evaluating good and bad leadership experiences with structured psychodynamic interpretations. Action research with over 500 professionals suggests positive professional and personal outcomes with this approach. Observed across participants was that the framework and comparative method provided: i) rarely accessed experiential self-analysis of their response range when operating in emotionally charged environments of innovation; ii) relatable language to insightfully describe and discuss the feelings, thoughts, and behaviours of leadership that influence outcomes; and iii) a way for individuals to access evidence-based underlying psychodynamic imprints influencing how they work with or destructively become overwhelmed by innovation’s emotional dynamics. While every innovation leadership situation is unique, the mechanism of “emotional gearing” featuring centred, surging, and stuck positions is proposed as a practice for how leaders can work with and be mindful of strong emotions within themselves, their team, and/or the organisation.

Work, organisations, and society have been transformed by digital technologies. Information and communication technologies are increasingly important to the management and delivery of human services. Significant sums are invested with the expectation that new technology will drive positive changes such as improving service user experience, efficiency, and outcomes. Sometimes the promises of technology are not fully realised. As researchers and practitioners in organisational and social dynamics it is important to understand how these technologies are affecting the ways in which we organise, communicate, and relate. In this article I explore one aspect of this dynamic, which is that technologies are entangled with the anxieties of human service organisations where the task is caring for people who are ill or in distress. This may lead to structures and processes that are not requisite to the primary task of these services and the technology implementation may fail to meet its aims. I draw on the work of Kurt Lewin, Isabel Menzies Lyth, sociotechnical systems theory, and my own research to explore the entangled nature of contemporary organisations. I suggest ways in which we might develop our concepts and practices to fully account for the role of technologies in organisational process and therefore our ability to consult to those processes.

Drawing on contemporary progressive psychoanalytic thinking and critical social theory, this article examines some of the orthodoxies and unchallenged assumptions in the theory and practice of systems psychodynamics and its offspring group relations. While their foundational forms have been undeniably important to our learning, we question why and how the structural and systemic underpinnings of real global inequities, and social justice organisations??? efforts to address these, are not having more impact in systems psychodynamic and group relations theorising and practice. We use our experience consulting with social justice organisations in their efforts to address these global inequities, and our development and adaption of the groups relations model to challenge potential orthodoxies and question resistance to change within the field. At heart, our inquiry is addressed to those of us committed to systems psychodynamic work and to the originating ethos of that work, in a vulnerable global context and to question, as Carson does, humanity’s faith in existing technological and sociopolitical progress.

This article explores the role of silence in a workplace responsible for supporting vulnerable families. The research is based on the assumption that organisational silence exists and investigates how it influences social work practices and affects professionals. Social workers manage a dual role: enforcing institutional authority while building trusting, respectful relationships with families. The project was conducted in a Danish municipality of 50,000 inhabitants, examining how silence shapes work dynamics. The study concludes that collaboration between management and staff is vital for cultivating openness, trust, and courage. It found a lack of shared goals, weak communication, poor emotional alignment, and absence of containment. These issues contribute to dysfunctional mirroring, emotional strain, and basic assumption behaviour. Though several initiatives were introduced, they lacked genuine staff support, leading to miscommunication and resistance. The project underscores the need to understand the radical disruptions in routines and expectations within organisational life. It reveals how both conscious and unconscious emotions can create a barrier between management and employees, reducing dialogue and engagement quality. Intense emotions increase anxiety, making it harder to accept accurate information and causing distorted perceptions–ultimately affecting the quality of care provided to vulnerable families.