A Psychoanalytic Institute's Response to Existential threats: A Case Study of Organizational Self-Inquiry and External Consultation.

The term institute is used inclusively here to refer to different organizational structures such as psychoanalytic societies and centers. Those organizations have primary tasks such as providing education and training in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Existential threats covers a range of factors, both internal and external to an organization, that may seriously impair or destroy its capacity to carry out its primary tasks and to survive as a functioning entity. Perceptions and responses relating to those threats are dynamic processes within the organization that shift and evolve over time. This case study explores one institute's use of organizational self-inquiry and external consultation to strengthen its capacity to perceive, make meaning of, and respond adaptively to those threats. The qualitative research for this case study is based on a series of semistructured individual interviews with a representative sample of participants in the consultation, close attention to the intersubjective experiences of interviewees and interviewers, and careful thematic analysis of the interview data. Interviewees shared their understanding of what led up to the consultation, their experience of the consultation, and their perception of its immediate and ongoing impact. Many interviewees felt that the consultation helped strengthen the institute's organizational capacity for resilience and innovation, expressed the desire for additional consultation to ensure the institute's survival and ongoing health, recommended that the institute include the study of organizational dynamics in its curriculum, and thought it should develop its internal capacity for organizational self-inquiry.

Restoring institutional integrity in the wake of sexual boundary violations: a case study.

It is widely acknowledged that sexual boundary violations by a faculty member at an analytic institute damage the local analytic community in ways that can reverberate for years. Yet little has been written about the process of institutional recovery. With one exception, a paper published after the major protagonists had died, no actual case studies are to be found in the literature. In 2010 a senior training analyst at a psychoanalytic training program abruptly resigned under the cloud of a presumed sexual boundary violation. Seventeen months later, an APsaA Committee on Institutes site visit presented a unique opportunity to study the institutional trauma and recovery process as they unfolded. This report highlights the importance of recognizing and working through the expectable institutional resistance to processing the trauma. This enables a sensitive response to the various constituencies that have been affected and allows the integrity of the institute to be restored.