Predictable Repetition Kills Desire
Psychoanalytic insights into why workplaces repeatedly undermine their aims
Abstract
I recently attended a psychoanalytic seminar on politics and my free-floating attention was grabbed by this phrase ‘predictable repetition kills desire’. It evoked in me a strong reaction, as I recalled so many workplaces where desire had been killed by the unconscious forces that produce predictable repetitive patterns and behaviours. In this short essay, I will share two examples of how predictable repetition kills desire, and conclude with reflections on why predictable repetition takes place, and potential ways to counter this. Firstly, let’s explore the psychoanalytic meaning of this phrase, the two key words being repetition and desire.
Repetition in psychoanalytic terms refers to repeated behaviours and ‘ways of being’ that are driven by unconsciously repressed thoughts and feelings. For example, a person who represses the hurt of childhood bullying may repeat in their adult life an unconscious reaction to this e.g. they may repeatedly try to help and rescue people because they identify closely with the victim’s pain. They create a personal ‘symptom’ that drives them to care for others. This symptom shapes much of their life, and it can produce good personal and social outcomes or it can become detrimental to themselves and others.
If the person over-identifies with their ‘symptom’ of caring they can organise their lives around trying to rescue people in a damaging way. They may repeatedly get involved in personal relationships with people who identify as victims, and at work they may over-identify with the ‘Wounded Self’ (Western 2012).
A healthy response to past traumas is repetition through sublimation. This is where the individual satisfies their unconscious needs (their drive) through creative actions. Freud establishes sublimation as a ‘mature defence mechanism’ in which underlying wishes, desires and anxieties are channelled in socially acceptable ways (Bateman & Holmes 1995: 92). In this case the repetition may be enacted through the individual becoming a nurse, or setting up a charity to support vulnerable children, or repeatedly taking caring actions that are reparative, developmental and creative. The message here is that repetitions of unconsciously driven actions don’t have to be negative. Whilst we cannot escape our past, and it always shows up in our adult life, neither are we determined by our past or condemned to follow any particular path.
Desire
Jacques Lacan the French Psychoanalyst reportedly said, ‘never give up on your desire’. The key to having a positive response to past traumas and life events is to keep desire alive and to satisfy it in ways that are not destructive. An individual may learn naturally how to sublimate their unconscious ‘symptom’ in creative and developmental ways, or they may need to undergo personal therapy to help them work through their trauma and find their own particular way of satisfying their desire in more positive ways.
It is important to note that there are no clear lines here, a person will often move between positive and destructive ways of satisfying their desire, or enact both positions simultaneously. An unconscious desire that produces healthy sublimation, means satisfying both an individual’s unconscious drive and also satisfying the (nondestructive) desire of others, thereby helping to support the social bond that is required to live well together in society.
In psychoanalytic terms, desire is explicitly related to ‘the desire of the other’ (Lacan). Whilst we consciously identify as being autonomous and in control of our desire, believing it to be ‘what we want’, our desire is also shaped by our unconscious relationships to others (present and past). We can spend a lifetime unwittingly enacting the ‘desire of the other’, often a formative figure in our early lives.
For example, a child whose mother showed great pleasure when they ate her homecooked food, may grow up with the desire to feed others to unconsciously satisfy her Mother’s desire. Their personal desire to be satisfied and happy is unconsciously linked to feeding others. This may be enacted literally by becoming a cook or chef, or metaphorically by becoming a preacher to feed others with spiritual food, or a lecturer to feed students with knowledge.
Again, this desire could be carried out in socially constructive positive ways or in negative ways, whereby the person turns their desire into self-destructive behaviour. For example, they may develop an unhealthy compulsion that always drives them to ‘feed others’ which has the opposite effect they desire and is not helpful but drives people away from them. Or perhaps they turn this desire/compulsion inwardly onto themselves, developing an eating disorder. Our desire is the source of our drive that strives to be satisfied. Our conscious desire is shaped by our unconscious desire, they are an entanglement. Desire mobilises us and gives us purpose, focusing our conscious and unconscious attachments and investments for better or worse.
Repetition and Desire in Groups
Both repetitions and desires are also enacted within groups and in social dynamics as well as in individuals. Work teams, organisations, and social and political movements can coalesce around shared unconscious dynamics (Bion 1961) that drive particular behaviours, either in task-orientated ways or in negative anti-task ways, and sometimes both together. A collective unconscious desire can be mobilised by skilful politicians to fill a perceived national lack. For example, a once great nation that has fallen on hard times often supports a populist leader who is able to mobilise followers around a new-found desire to fill the ‘lack of greatness’. This often entails finding an outsider-enemy to rail against.
Predictable Repetition Kills Desire
Predictable repetition refers to predictable and repetitive patterns of thinking and acting that are driven by unconscious forces. These predictable repetitions close down the space for creative exploration and developmental activity. Individuals and teams may consciously desire positive change, but at an unconscious level the desire for change has been killed. Any attempt that strives to satisfy our drive in a developmental way then meets resistance. The repetition continues.
We will now explore this process through two examples:
Example 1. The predictable repetition of dead-end meetings
In many workplaces, meetings are renowned for going on and on in endless cycles. Those who attend these meetings repeat patterns of behaviour that lead on a path to nowhere. Sometimes it’s a particular recurrent meeting (the Monday morning team meeting) or it can be a general ‘meeting culture’ where meetings are displaced activity, making us feel busy whilst undermining developmental and productive work. These meetings become a predictable moment in the lives of employees. They are attended with a mixed sense of dread and comfort.
Repetition, even when we complain about it, offers the comfort of sameness and reliability ‘oh it’s time for the team meeting again, switch your brain off before you go in…ha ha’. Those who attend these meetings at one level are aware that they are anti-task, yet at another level, they rationalise their participation convincing themselves they are necessary. These meetings serve another unspoken purpose. They offer a placeholder in an organisational structure that creates a shared (unconscious) fantasy that work is being accomplished when in reality work is being avoided at best, and at worse - undermined. These repetitive meetings create a sense that ‘we are all in this together’, a conformist and dependent position which means forgoing one’s desire and autonomy.
I recently worked in a global company and we looked at the activity data from the diary of a senior employee over a week. They had spent 65% of their time in meetings, 25% on emails, 7% on private work time and 3% on ‘other’. Another executive had spent 47 hours in meetings in the past week. They said this pattern was commonplace across their department and although they all agreed it was not a productive or creative use of time, the team had become unconsciously attached and even dependent on this way of working (non-working). This work culture of ‘meeting repetition’ had become a ‘predictable repetition that had killed their desire for purposeful change. At a conscious level, they were engaged and committed to developmental work, yet at an unconscious level their desire had been killed.
This tension between the unconscious killing of desire and the conscious wishing to be developmental and productive (in individuals and teams) creates a dysfunctional dynamic that gets acted out through displaced behaviours elsewhere. A similar thing happens where endless emails circulate around and around, with everyone being copied in. The circular dynamic creates a feeling of busyness and work activity. This ‘email contagion’ kills developmental activity by numbing us, and substituting repetition in the place of desire.
Example 2. The predictably repetitive failure of generational succession
In family businesses and organisations established by strong founders, in far too many cases a predictable repetition of failure occurs when transitioning to the second generation.
In reality, very large numbers fail to make the leap. Only a third of businesses successfully make the transition from each generation to the next, says Mr Astrachan—“and that figure has been very stable, and is true around the globe.” http://www.economist.com/node/3352686
There are multiple and complex reasons for this, but two that stand out are; 1) the inability of the founding generation to let go of power, and 2) the lack of a planned strategy. What gets frequently played out in organisations that fail to make this generational transition, are predictably repetitive unconscious resistances, which ends up killing the desire of the two generations to work collaboratively to bring about future success.
If the old do not go, the young may not stay. Instead, they may leave and set up a rival business of their own. It may take the shadow of the Grim Reaper to get things moving: “Nothing helps unblock a stalemate about succession as effectively as a mild coronary,” says Manfred Kets de Vries, author of a book on succession. http://www.economist.com/node/3352686
The first generation consciously desires that the second generation successfully grows the company, thereby continuing to allow the ‘good object’ they founded to thrive. Yet unconsciously they undermine this desire at every turn, claiming any new strategy is the wrong strategy, that the new board just doesn’t understand the issues etc. The predictable repetition of saying no kills both their own desire to pass on the company successfully and also kills the desire of the next generation to take over. The outcome is that either the next generation leaves the company, or the firm is sold or wound up, often leaving a painful family/company legacy of anger and blame.
Some studies suggest that only 5% of family firms are still creating shareholder value beyond the third generation. The army of consultants that has sprung up to help family firms resolve differences has its roots deeply sunk in psychoanalysis. Succession is the moment that most often calls for their services. http://www.economist.com/node/3352686
How can psychoanalysis help?
In both of these cases, a psychoanalytic approach begins by looking beyond the obvious and rational explanations (which have failed thus far to change things). In the repetitive meetings scenario, the answer to the problem is not a structural one e.g. to make meetings shorter, train managers in facilitation skills or finish meetings with action points. These things can help, but only when the underlying cause is addressed. Otherwise, any solution will be undermined as the group will tenaciously defend their unconsciously held position, in this case - to avoid developmental work at all costs.
The psychoanalytically informed manager or consultant seeks to understand why a group is unconsciously invested in maintaining a position that consciously they really don’t like. This entails applying the psychoanalytic understanding that unconscious pleasure is gained even when consciously we feel unhappy about a situation i.e. ‘pleasure is gained from displeasure’ hence the attachment to the position. The founders of companies at a conscious level really would like to pass the business to the next generation and the repetitive meeting employees really would like to work developmentally and gain satisfaction through creative work, yet both groups are attached to undermining and sabotaging themselves. It is important to note that psychoanalytic approaches do not seek universal answers i.e. each situation has its local and specific issues that need to be addressed, there isn’t one answer for all.
The psychoanalytic approach looks at each case individually, working with the group to discover the particular unconscious symptom that prevails and the emotional and unconscious dynamics at play. Only then can the work begin to undo the knots that bind unconscious attachments to self-destructive behaviours. Psychoanalytic approaches have the potential to be liberating and break through stuck patterns that other approaches miss. The psychoanalytic insights that are revealed through this process, not only help to provide solutions to the presenting problems, they also uncover complex dynamics that apply to many other situations. Companies and teams can take unexpected giant leaps forward as they find new libido and drive to unleash new strategies and new hope that emerges when desire is rekindled.