Volume 1, Number 1
Spring 2007
Articles will open in PDF format in a new windowLetter from Co-Editor-in-Chief
Michael A. Diamond, Ph.D.Organizational Totalitarianism and the Voices of Dissent
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.Abstract: This paper undertakes a psychodynamically-informed cultural study of organizational totalitarianism in the contemporary United States. It proposes a distinctive national style to totalitarianism, one bound up with unbridled competitive capitalism and the sanctity of “the bottom line” as the highest and only good. It explores universal psychodynamics of totalitarianism, wherein an ideology is created and embraced that radically simplifies the world, repudiates if not destroys all opposing views, and is intolerant of all doubt. Examples from American popular culture, literature, and organizational narrative are used to illustrate these processes.
Keeping Track of the Self: Empathy, Recognition and the Problem of Emotional Attunement in Organizations
David P. Levine, Ph.D.Abstract: In this paper, I explore the struggle over recognition in organizational life. At issue in the struggle over recognition is the way in which organizations provide those working in them an opportunity to be seen and understood in a particular way. In that struggle the emotional understanding we refer to in the language of empathy plays an important role. I consider both the links between empathy and recognition and the differences between them. The distinction between the two leads to a consideration of false forms of empathy, which I refer to as pseudo empathy.