IS SOCIAL WORK GOOD FOR BUSINESS?
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A Mirrored Hallway! A Mirrored Hallway: Two steps forward may not be helpful here!
Have you even been present in a “fun house?” The “Fun House” is a place you often find in a carnival, or an amusement park. You enter a certain hallway to find yourself the subject of the mirror’s reflection. You become tall and thin within one mirror, short and stout within another. Each mirror, depending on its refractory angle will present to you a version of yourself, defined instantaneously for you to ascertain the effect of the mirror’s (benevolent) perception. You laugh (perhaps), or maybe it bothers you, that so quickly a “gaze” can change the way you think about yourself, and the way you think about the function or purpose of an object’s ability to perceive you (without knowing you) momentarily. You can walk away holding that perception in your mind for some time. As I write about this, no doubt if that has been your experience, you are apt to find yourself back (memory wise) to this place in time. How quickly the mirror’s perception can take its hold within your mind, and transform you one place and time to another, without much effort on the part of the trigger. This is the essence of transference.
I was taught, right from the beginning of life, we face the world with two realities! One we carry inside from our early life, and the one that keeps unfolding before us, moment by moment in the temporal and spatial surroundings around us. The moments of life that bring us to cross roads, decision making, those times that call upon us to use our inner guide or trusted intuition all stem from the ongoing interaction and relational nature of being human. We draw from the inner world our capacities for trust, attachment, guidance and direction! But the moment we call up on them to aid us in our walk (or run as the case may be) considers the question of how helpful or resistant they can be to help us maneuver the world of shifting relational perception! Can these integrated or split off aspects of early experiences safely interrogate the situational moment to help decipher if you are in fact dealing with reality on its own accord, or the constructed reality of someone else’s inner wishes or desires. Are you the reciever or sender of the internal yet unfinished dialogue in the relational story? How do you know if your participating in someone else’s past unresolved conflicts, or whether you are the contributor to the current phenomenon in question. Another way of stating this question: Do you know if you are the subject or object of transference!
The literature on this subject is vast, stemming from Freud’s original work that included the concept of transference ascribed solely to the therapeutic relational situation. There has been enough research to date to show us that this phenomenon is not limited to the therapist’s room. There is enough information in our research annals to provide us with the idea that this phenomenon occurs more often than we think. One place I hypothesize its presence, is in the modern workplace, where the acts of supervision, team leadership, and employee protocols and hierarchy dominates.
Transference: is the act of carrying forward from the past and projecting it (as an unfinished aspect of one’s desire to recover missed learning opportunities) into the relational situation, most often this takes place in a situation of dominance/hierarchy. Like a past even, dramatically unfolding silently within the present overlapping relational occurrence, I use the term “actors” to define the individuals who participate unknowingly within this conundrum. These people, then actors participate in a world “as if” the Other has a set of unspoken motivations or hidden desires kept silent, but make themselves known in the analysis of the “other” via the relational impetus. Tolmacz (2009) describes transference, the actions upon which its entrance into the relationship become embedded depend on the following, its relational spring, its ubiquitous nature, the mechanisms performed under which it arises, and the consciousness of its presence (or lack of) within the relational event under which it
A series of articles that focus its content on social work and business. All together, you can decide if Social Work is good for business!
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