Wilfred Bion’s Organization Change Legacy: “Without Memory or Desire”

Sarah J. Brazaitis ()
Additional contact information
Sarah J. Brazaitis: Teachers College, Columbia University

Chapter 9 in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, 2017, pp 143-156 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Wilfred Bion was a change leader who served in and lived through two World Wars and was deeply affected by his experiences on the battlefield and later in treating veterans with shell shock as an army psychiatrist. From his earliest experiences of group life (including bullying) at a British boarding school, to his frustration of enduring the politics and sometimes corrupt aspects of military life, to his satisfaction in developing new, respectful and successful treatment modalities for veterans, to his innovative efforts at transforming the army’s hiring practices, and finally to being a founding member of group relations and experiential learning in industry – Bion’s contributions to organization change are monumental and long lasting. His theory of basic assumptions in group life, his development of the therapeutic community, and his ground-breaking leaderless group technique are all innovations that are used today in organization change efforts. More than half a century after Bion formulated his ideas, his contributions continue to reverberate with significant impact. This chapter traces Bion’s life and legacy as a seminal leader in organization change.

Keywords: Basic assumptions; Bion; Group dynamics; Group relations; Leaderless group; Therapeutic community; Psychodynamic theories; Psychoanalysis; Shell shock; Tavistock Institute; Work group mentality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-52878-6_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319528786

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-52878-6_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().