Psychodynamic Coaching and Supervision for Executives

An Entrepreneur and a Psychoanalyst in Dialogue

Thomas Kretschmar, Andreas Hamburger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000423648
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología industrial y organizacional

Thomas Kretschmar and Andreas Hamburger provide an important overview of psychodynamic work in companies, presenting different viewpoints and explaining key psychoanalytic terms and techniques for coaching and supervision. Written in the form of a dialogue between Kretschmar, an entrepreneur, and Hamburger, a psychoanalyst, the book provides unique insight into psychodynamic coaching and supervision.

Psychodynamic Coaching and Supervision for Executives begins with an overview of coaching, psychodynamic approaches, the unconscious and relevant psychoanalytic theory. Kretschmar and Hamburger then consider Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD) in business, assess current research into coaching and supervision and present a selection of key case studies. At the end of each chapter, the authors compare their positions, giving important contextual information, exploring objections, complications and improvements, and providing a precise summary of the topic.

This book will be an illuminating guide for therapists and professionals who wish to learn how psychoanalytic theory and practice can be used for coaching, counseling and supervision in an organizational context.

1 Historical overview

10.4324/9781003169673-1

Vocational counseling formats can be assigned to a field of interventional forms, which is characterized by numerous overlaps, but also by clearly visible differences. We start by analyzing and discussing similarities and distinctions between coaching, supervision and psychotherapy.

1.1 Similarities and differences in coaching and supervision

The term “coaching” has its origin in sports. The term has only been used in business and human resource (HR) development since the 1990s (Müller, 2012, p. 9). Before that, comparable services were usually described as “mentoring” (Western, 2012, p. 2).

Some authors apply “coaching” only to vocational and managerial topics. This is Müller’s definition, with the recommendation of the Deutscher Coaching Verband: “Coaching is a form of distinct assistance, mainly for executives and experts and their personal development within a vocational context” (Müller, 2012, p. 10). The Deutscher Bundesverband Coaching takes a similar line: “Coaching is the professional counseling, accompanying, and support of persons with management and supervisory functions and of experts in organizations” (Dietz, Holetz & Schreyögg, 2012, p. 20).

The existence of further definitions by other federations shows, however, that coaching is not only understood in this narrow sense. The authors of this book have had the experience that even though executives call on a coach, initially, to meet a vocational need, in the end, topics from all areas of their lives are included in the process. The International Coaching Federation (ICF), for example, sees coaching as not limited only to vocational topics: Professional coaching is “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential” (International Coaching Federation, 2016, p. 1). Health coaching – and its sub-forms, life coaching and stress management coaching – lies even further away from tangible vocational issues (Greif, 2013, pp. 230–231). We have previously indicated that there might be an overlap between reasons for psychotherapy and reasons for coaching. Stress management and health management are the most obvious examples.

Supervision, the second term to be discussed in this book, is much older – going back more than a century – and is based on various theories. Weigand (2000, p. 56) questions whether the term “one-on-one supervision” by now seems, perhaps, a little “tame, stuffy and bland”, or whether it possibly constitutes “a concept within the technical language of supervision describing a specific approach, clearly marked-off against other dyadic settings”, which deserves protection. This book aims to develop the concept of a task-based supervision in organizations and enterprises that is clearly marked off from coaching, and that refers to a specific – namely, a psychoanalytic – methodology of counseling.

The term “supervision” was originally used for the counseling of volunteers in social work, or was understood as an accompaniment for the therapies that aspiring psychotherapists undertook as part of their training. This means that the term was focused on health and social services (see Chapter 1.4). Even its extension to teams and – after the systemic turn of the humanities in the 1970s – its incorporation into the institutional context, together with a growing influence from organizational sociology on supervision (“Soziologisierung der Supervision”; Belardi, 1992; Hermann-Stietz, 2009, pp. 15–16), focused mainly on the social, healthcare and educational sectors. Supervision in profit-orientated corporate contexts was used mainly in respect of teams and staff, and only tentatively became a part of the discourse on supervision (Böhnisch, 2002). By contrast, coaching positioned itself firmly within the framework of executive counseling; the profit motivation of enterprises, which was challenged by those within the discourse on supervision who were leaning toward sociology, was taken for granted by the up-and-coming coaching discourse. This decided orientation of coaching toward executives is the reason for the common division of the field of application within the literature. Supervision is usually discussed with reference to the operational level of organizations, whereas coaching is allocated to the management level. The result is that changes brought about by supervision begin from “below”, whereas changes set off by coaching begin from “above” (Kühl, 2008). However, this object-related distinction makes the third, but decisive, difference fade into the background: While supervision traditionally includes the whole person, in coaching, the stress is on the functional improvement of an organization’s staff (Kühl, 2008). This created differentiating definitions, both within the development of conceptual distinctions and within field expertise: In the field of coaching, for example, “psychodynamic coaching” generally includes the personality as a whole and particularly its unconscious functions; while the field of executive supervision ties psychodynamic counseling in with the traditional concept of supervision, but specifies its field of application. For conceptual clarification, Pannewitz (2012) suggests using the terms “executive supervision” and “executive coaching” synonymously, and defining them as the “advancement of the technical, conceptual and social competence needed for the solution of managerial tasks or as support of self-management” (Buer, 1999, p. 186, cited by Pannewitz, 2012, p. 23).

Compared with coaching, supervision has a different target group and a different tradition. Supervision doesn’t primarily target HR development. Indeed, supervision often aims also to promote vocational functions, whereas coaching also supports the client’s personality. Supervision developed in parallel to social work and psychoanalysis (Hamburger, 2016a), whereas coaching has developed within HR management in companies. Accordingly, as Schreyögg argues (2012, pp. 26–27), supervision doesn’t necessarily need managerial and organizational concepts, but therapeutic approaches instead. However, the opposite argument can be made, that supervision actually does need organizational concepts, but they must come from a different perspective.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the DGSv’s equation of the terms “supervision” and “coaching” has not met with universal applause from the coaching federations (Schreyögg, 2013, pp. 232–237). However, viewed from the psychodynamic perspective, we do not always see the need for a strict differentiation. As we shall show later, the development of the personality plays a major role in the psychodynamic approach. The counselor’s demeanor is closer to that of a psychodynamic psychotherapist and the theoretical concepts arise from the psychodynamic paradigm.

The comparable requirements of business coaching and supervision are often considered to be equal, since the client expects the coachee or supervisee to become better equipped to do a given job. However, if we use this interpretation, we lose sight of the fact that both approaches rely on different procedures and reference systems, which we shall keep coming back to throughout the book. The process of psychoanalytic supervision (Mertens & Hamburger, 2016) is characterized for the most part by abstinence (see Chapter 4.9.1) and mainly refers to developmental and personality-based concepts, while coaching predominantly pursues an approach of change.

1.2 The history of psychodynamic work in business

1.2.1 The history of psychoanalytic supervision

Supervision had its origins in supervising and training the volunteers of the American Charity Organization Societies. This arose in the late 19th century as a result of a long-lasting economic depression and the consequent impoverishment of large parts of the population. To optimize the effort of these volunteers and to shape it to meet the needs of those concerned, the volunteers were instructed by “paid agents” in the main offices. Important changes were made in 1920 when the psychoanalyst Otto Rank came to the United States and applied himself to social welfare. Due to Rank and the other psychoanalysts immigrating to the United States in the 1940s, supervision soon developed a psychoanalytic component: It became clear that work in social welfare could be complicated by defense processes and entanglements, and that for good results, it would be helpful to reflect on these (Lohl, 2016). In Vienna as early as the 1920s, August Aichhorn, Willy Hoffer, Anna Freud and Siegfried Bernfeld had offered case reviews and workshops for youth welfare workers and teachers (Aichhorn, 2011; Steinhardt, 2005, p. 32). In 1927 Michael Balint established “training-cum-research” workshops for medical doctors and visiting nurses in London. They were pioneers in their use of a psychoanalytic technique: The manner of case presentation and the resonance of the groups were used as a key to the understanding of the unconscious working relationship (Balint, 2002 [1954]).

Social casework developed on the basis of this psychoanalytic tradition, in which supervision played an important role in promoting self-reflection as part of understanding one’s own professional role (Hechler, 2005; Steinhardt, 2005). From this, an independent line of supervision developed in social work and healthcare. Alongside the psychoanalytic paradigm, other concepts were added and gained importance. Systemic and sociological approaches drew attention to institutional contexts and team dynamics. From the 1960s, a transition from a psychologizing to a “sociologizing phase” of supervision is noticeable (Hermann-Stietz, 2009, pp. 15–16). Through the dialogue on this and other paradigms, supervision has developed into a distinct format of counseling (Rappe-Giesecke, 2013; Gröning, 2016).

Psychoanalytic supervision advanced predominantly within the framework of psychoanalytic training and was also further utilized in healthcare (Bergmann, 2016) as well as in business (Weigand, 2016). Since the mid-20th century, the relationship dimension of psychoanalysis increasingly took center stage. The term “the unconscious”, which had at first primarily been understood as an internal psychological memory system, was now seen increasingly as an interpersonal field. In the 1960s and 1970s, the classic one-person psychology was revised in the context of numerous new models such as object relations theory and self-psychology as well as in the context of interpersonal approaches. Infant research revolutionized assumptions about child development, which in turn affected the treatment practice. From the perspective of field theory and relationship, the unconscious is not an intra-psychological, but an interpersonal-systemic process (on the origins, see Conci, 2005; also Baranger & Baranger, 2008 [1961]; Bauriedl, 1980, 1994; Stern, 1996). “Thus in supervision or when presenting cases, you not only speak about clients but also to a certain extent about yourself. The supervisorial situation in psychoanalytic training thus becomes a very special field of force” (Mertens & Hamburger, 2016, p. 19).

This “very special field of force”, however, can only partly be transferred to psychoanalytic supervision beyond training. Supervision within the framework of psychoanalytic training is a case apart, as the skills taught are precisely those that enable the trainee to establish an open, alive, analytic situation and to maintain it. Thus, there is a strong parallel between the learning content and the learning situation. With supervisees with a background in organ medicine, economy, social work or pedagogy, this does not apply. They are supposed to heal patients, manufacture cars, guide youths or teach students.

The question we ask in the following chapters is this: Which elements of the psychoanalytic attitude can be transferred to supervision in fields of application beyond training? The analytic attitude, according to Alfred Lorenzer’s method (1970), is based on “scenic understanding”. It is neither the conceiving of the analysand’s message content (logic understanding) nor the comprehension of his¹¹ message intention (psychological understanding) that allows access to the dynamic unconscious processes. Rather, it is the reflection on the interaction unfolding in the analytical space, the “scene”, in which the analyst is complementarily involved. The transmission of this psychoanalytic attitude to supervisorial processes also has to mirror the quite different assignment. Nevertheless, in supervision, a psychoanalytic attitude seems possible and useful – even in cases not aimed at the training of psychoanalysts – because “evenly suspended attention” and “scenic understanding” (Lorenzer, 1970) are adopted and facilitated in oscillation with the focal work on the supervisorial assignment.

Supervision in a work context requires an adaptation of the psychoanalytic attitude. The supervisor is not himself in the field; his participation comes about via the supervisee, who is the field expert. The supervisor’s participation in the supervisee’s field expertise usually happens analogously. Occasionally, however, the supervisor, too, may experience a complementary participation in the field, especially in situations where the unconscious reflection of the scene repeats itself strongly within the supervision (Baranger & Baranger, 2008 [1961]; Vollmer & Pires, 2010). The subject of supervision is, of course, always the (therapeutic, economic, organizational) process run by the supervisee and not – as in psychoanalysis or therapy – the client. In the diverse forms of supervision common in organizations, systematic institutional references are being established; these have to be considered accurately, named and constantly managed. The specificity of the supervisorial field has consequences for dealing with abstinence. Interpretations in an institutional framework are always given with respect to work assignment and to the supervisor’s position. This constraint has practical consequences: One of the most common traps of the supervisorial process, which has often brought it to a halt, is the non-reflective assumption of the supervisor that he knows better what the supervisee is supposed to do. Just as psychoanalysts should not thoughtlessly give in to the temptation to consider themselves to be “better parents”, so should the supervisor not see himself as the better therapist, the better CEO or the better department manager. While the supervisor needs to listen empathetically to the supervisee’s complaints about institutional dysfunctionalities, reflection on the scene as well as the work assignment require the supervisor also to keep in mind the perspective of the institution and others involved in the supervised process. The technical neutrality of the psychoanalyst also has to be re-defined in the supervisory application. Assessment (as in therapeutic settings) compromises the further development of the scene; all the same, in certain work assignments, it may be inevitable if it serves to accomplish given objectives. The supervisees themselves will wonder (and will perhaps be asked) if the supervision achieved its goals, and if it was useful. Since the supervised activity itself serve...