Transitional Approach in Action

Gilles Amado, Ph.D., Professor of Organizational Psychosociology at the HEC School of Management, Paris, is known as an expert of transition through two books he co-edited, 'The Transitional Approach to Change', with A. Ambrose and 'The Transitional Approach in Action', with L. Vansina, published in 2001 and 2005 by Karnac and which are indebted to the close work he had been undertaking for more than thirty years with Harold Bridger, a founding member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. He is a founder member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations, an associate member of the Bayswater Institute and is particularly involved in action-research and consultancy in Europe and Latin America in the fields of industry, health, education, music and sport. Leopold S. Vansina, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Leuven and Universite de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. He worked as an organization consultant at the International Institute for Organizational and Social Development (IOD Leuven), which he founded and directed for twenty-five years. He has headed the Professional Development Institute (Pro-Dev. Ltd) and is a member of the Academy of Management, and ISPSO.

'It is encouraging to notice that more and more clinical institutions, organisations and even professional associations are becoming aware of the important and complex interactions between psychic processes and organisational realities. The engagement in transitional processes, however, demands courage. Courage that is proper to any pursuit of truth and social justice. At times, this search generates excitement, at other times we become scared by the realities we discover. Sometimes we need to cast aside certain realities to imagine and invent new things and subsequently face them again to make effective use of whatever we created. Society and human beings need such pursuits of truth and social justice for genuine development. The courage it takes to become engaged is only matched by the courage to live with the consequences.'- From the IntroductionThe chapters in this volume cover a wide range of topics that concentrate around four themes: transitional change in therapeutic communities; in working conferences for professional development or training; in organisation consulting with an emphasis on organisational learning; and in self studies of working systems in action. In all these psychic activities, "time and space" were created to allow for transitional processes to become alive. A therapist, a manager, a consultant or a layman may create conditions that facilitate or hinder human beings to become engaged in these normal, healthy processes, but the persons concerned undertakethe basic psychic work.Contributors: Gilles Amado, Rina Bar-Lev Elieli, Harold Bridger, Caroline Drevon, Ernest Fruge, J. Alan Harrow, Marc Horowitz, Dominique Lhuilier, Derek N. Raffaelli, Rafael Ramirez, Dominique Rolland, Andre Sirota, Marie-Jeanne Vansina-Cobbaert, Leopold Vansina

• Introduction -- The discovery of the therapeutic community -- A therapeutic community: a space for multiple transitional change -- The therapeutic community: its potential for development and choice of future -- A journey towards integration -- A transitional approach to management education: the Sextant experience -- Leadership dimensions of the physician's role: a transitional approach to training in paediatric haematology/oncology -- Intermediate cultural space -- Action research and transitional processes: risk prevention in a hospital in Burundi -- The role and limits of methods in transitional change process -- The art of reviewing: a cornerstone in organizational learning -- Self action research