This text forms part of the presentation of the causAbock at the ITM in Medellín, Colombia.
The title of the presentation, ‘Change, mourning and identity: why transforming an organisation also hurts, stirs and reshapes‘, was proposed by the university’s academic programme, the Master’s in Organisational Management, which invited us to share a perspective from psychoanalysis.
For this presentation, we decided to follow the approach outlined in the university’s proposed title. A path, amongst other possible ones, which, for us, is that of the signifier.
We shall thus take two signifiers: change and mourning. From there, our aim was that, by the end of the presentation, each participant would draw their own conclusions, answers or further questions regarding the second part of the title: why transforming an organisation also hurts, stirs and reshapes.
As the title suggests, one might first identify in these signifiers a desire or intention: for change or transformation—likewise, mourning as a possible effect of such change or, indeed, a barrier.
It will be understood that this perspective necessarily takes into account the subjectivity of speaking being. A subjectivation which, as the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan says, implies the separation of the subject from their organism; it encompasses the realm of truth and the meaning (1) that the subject gives to the phenomena that concern them, and thus forms part of the structural misunderstanding.
We shall therefore begin with the question of change.
Language.
From experience working with companies and other organisations, it sometimes seems quite common to hear of problems or barriers that hinder internal processes, and which are often summarised as the famous’ communication problems’.
This is a signifier that circulates rapidly within organisations and which, moreover, is not infrequently described as the greatest ‘barrier’ to the much-desired ‘change’. Of course, there are other – let us put it this way – symptoms that interact and will depend on each context. In this case, we shall stick to the one already mentioned to support our argument.
However, we shall not approach this presentation from the perspective of ‘communication’; our focus will be on language itself, which is what interests psychoanalysis. As Jacques Lacan so aptly points out, the norm amongst us speaking beings—the speaking-being—is that we are ‘submerged’ (2) by language.
From this, what can be inferred as normality is the misunderstanding. This is expressed, for example, by Domenico Cosenza in his book Clínica del exceso (3), when he states that it is precisely the difficulties in sustaining that bond with the Other that form part of “the structural misunderstanding that characterises relations between speaking beings”.
This immediately gives us an idea of what language implies for the subject in the various spheres of life in which they operate. A misunderstanding that can be illustrated by something as simple as what Jacques-Alain Miller tells us: “it happens that when someone speaks, they are thinking of something else”. (4)
Language is so crucial to psychoanalysis that, according to the psychoanalyst José María Álvarez, the father of psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud – gave it a central place in his work, presenting it as “the essence of the human, the fabric of the soul, to such an extent that symptoms present themselves to us as facts of language”. (5)
Remember that, subtly, we raised at the outset the supposed communication problems at the organisational level as a symptom.
The psychoanalyst Gustavo Dessal tells us, for example, that in his discovery of the unconscious and the founding of the psychoanalytic method, “Freud chose poetry, (…) he opted for words rather than neurons”. (6)
Language is, as Lacan says, “the condition of the unconscious” (…) “there is, in fact, no unconscious without language”. (7) This gives rise to the unconscious as a perfectly articulated form of knowledge (savoir), whose essence is further determined by repetition, the unary trait, insofar as it commemorates the irruption of jouissance. (8)
It is a form of knowledge (savoir), according to Lacan, that entails not the slightest bit of knowledge, for it is inscribed in a discourse of which the subject knows neither the meaning nor the text, nor in what language it is written (9). And yet, it becomes a determining factor in the actions, decisions or other movements that the subject undertakes.
Jouissance, Lacan’s translation of the Freudian death drive, would thus become a barrier (henceforth a defence) against desire, the latter—desire itself—being a defence against said jouissance. (10)
From jouissance, that which lies beyond the pleasure principle, arises the compulsion to repeat mentioned by Freud (11), which, paradoxically, despite generating displeasure or pain, does not contradict the pleasure principle (12). That is to say, the compulsive quest tied to the drive, which would seek to repeat indefinitely the displeasure, the jouissance, the excess.
On defence.
Now that we have introduced the concept of defence, we need to articulate it differently in this presentation. The Freudian term defence, used here in English, comes from the German word – Abwehr. A term Freud employed in his work, thereby naming the structural division between neurosis (normality), psychosis (madness) and perversion. Its corresponding mechanisms being repression, foreclosure and denial.
Defence – Abwehr – is composed of the preposition ab and the verb wehren: ab marking a beginning, a voluntary action-decision (“unconscious but decidedly by the subject”(13)), or even a break. One might therefore say that it involves a rejection, a blocking, the erection of a barrier, or maintaining a distance to protect oneself from something.
As José María Ávarez rightly points out, “in German, this verb has connotations that differ somewhat from those expressed in Spanish [here in English] by the verb ‘to reject’. It is used, for example, to say ‘to repel an enemy’ (den Feind abwehren). Specifically, in this type of connotation it is implied that the enemies were merely driven back, that they were not destroyed and that, therefore, they could return”. (14) Consider, for example, the use of the word in other contexts, such as the Bundeswehr, or the German armed forces.
The introduction of defence and the subject, José María Álvarez tells us, lays the foundations of pathos. Likewise, the differentiation of generic clinical types, which, on the basis of pathos, determines the aforementioned clinical structures.
Structures for which, according to José María Álvarez, Freud “elaborated the specific form that the possible failure of the defence takes in each of them, and the consequent ‘return’ to the subject of that which it does not wish to know”. (15)
That which has become established in the subject as a compulsion to repeat, and which the subject passively experiences as “something beyond their control, despite which they repeatedly exhibit the same thing”, commonly referred to, for example, as fate. (16)
“Generally speaking, defence constitutes a generic mode of action whereby the ego (Ich) (…), reacts against what it judges to be irreconcilable by resorting to various procedures”. (17) In the normal subject, according to Freud, it is “the necessary defence against the libidinal demands of the Oedipus complex.” (18)
According to Freud, following the line of thought outlined above, this can be traced, for example, to that which hindered the pursuit of primary satisfactions to which the subject had to renounce and which, necessarily, left the mark of an unconscious prohibition. (19)
From the above, the symptom emerges as a means of satisfying that pursuit. (20)
It follows, then, that every speaking being employs such defences; that is to say, defends themselves against something. Having said this, it will also be understood that so-called normality, as Jean-Claude Maleval tells us, would be nothing more than a mere fiction, for in so-called normality, the subject ‘would be free of anxiety and symptoms. No one has ever come across him [this subject supposedly bearing normality]”. (21)
The unconscious.
Having started with language, we shall now consider the following quote from Lacan, in which he tells us that “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other” (22). That is to say, it is structured as a discourse, and that “all discourse is the discourse of the Other, even when it is the subject who speaks”. (23)
This is clearly evident in the fact that no child is born without having to grapple with the effects of language, in which their parents or those fulfilling that role were also “caught up in the whole problem of discourse, with previous generations behind them as well”. (24)
However, just because it concerns the unconscious and what arises there, it does not absolve the subject of any responsibility. As José María Álvarez states, in psychoanalysis, before adopting a sympathetic stance, one appeals to the subject’s participation in the disorder of the world about which they complain so much and which they say causes them suffering; that is to say, the articulation between unconscious determinism and subjective responsibility. (25)
Among the properties of the unconscious, the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, tells us, are the absence of contradiction; the primary process (shifting of investments); its timeless nature; and the substitution of external reality with the psychic. (26)
As for timelessness, Freud states that unconscious processes are neither ordered by time nor modified or related to it. Similarly, unconscious processes show no regard for reality, as they are subject to the pleasure principle, which, of course, includes the paradox mentioned earlier.
Facing desire.
Having begun by associating change with a desire, psychoanalysis states that the subject desires little, desires nothing, or is saturated. That is to say, within the analytical framework, the subject’s lack of desire is evident, whilst in our contemporary world, there is an excess—an infinite number of available objects. (27)
For example, certain ways of satisfying desire are recognised, which translate into maintaining desire as unsatisfied or as impossible. In the first case, the subject is always preceded by ‘but’; in the second, by ‘just in case‘. (28)
Satisfaction arising from ‘dissatisfaction’, which, as we saw earlier, does not contradict the pleasure principle.
Example of unfulfilled desire:
– Someone who dreams of doing something, and when the opportunity arises, runs away. This fulfils what Freud proposed regarding one of his best-known cases with the following words: Some subjects “are dominated by the opposition between reality and fantasy. What they yearn for with the greatest intensity in their fantasies is precisely what they flee from when reality presents itself to them”. (29)
– In this very example, for instance, those who, on condition of keeping their desire unfulfilled, at the slightest hint of the possibility of introducing changes that would lead to the fulfilment of that desire, flee or sabotage that possibility.
– For example, in other, more everyday scenarios, some tirelessly complain about a partner whilst remaining there, in whatever context. Faced with the possibility of improving the situation, they prefer to take flight.
Impossible Desire:
– Those who, on condition of rendering their desire impossible, put things off again and again. Or fill themselves with endless to-do lists.
– The multitude of projects started only to be left unfinished, even though there is always an excuse.
– They immerse themselves in the feat of a great achievement to feel worthy of a sense of being recognised.
– Doubt is always present, especially when it comes to something that matters.
– The one who has to ask permission for everything (30)
The Overwhelmed:
– The one who sees or feels too much of everything, who lives under the illusion—similar to that of the market, for example—of objects that are always available, replaceable, and whose planned obsolescence renews the search for and saturation with such objects.
– Not much to do because everything is already provided for; it is replaceable immediately.
Those who fail upon succeeding:
– Some who even ‘fall ill precisely when a deeply rooted and long-pursued desire is fulfilled. It seems as though they cannot bear their own happiness, for the causal link between the onset of illness and success cannot be doubted’. (31)
– For example, at an organisational level—which is what interests you—those who, upon sensing their company’s triumph, set about ruining it, dominated by that unconscious force that ceaselessly repeats itself.
– Even at the family level.
– Something suddenly appears in their lives upon the fulfilment of their longing.
The organisation: your second home.
Nor is it unusual to see these ideas embedded in the slogans proclaimed at the organisational, institutional and corporate levels, amongst others.
And indeed, the family novel is often carried over into the organisation. For, as it concerns the unconscious, as mentioned earlier, the investments of primary processes know no temporality, with the psychic reality replacing the external one. (32)
According to the above, family complexes, as Jacques Lacan (33) called them, are indeed reproducible within the organisation, as that other scene of the primary’s repetition.
What Lacan and psychoanalysis call a complex refers to structure. The complex thus does not denote complexity, even though the subjective tends to complicate the bond between speaking beings.
We therefore have, according to Lacan, that “what defines the complex is the fact that it reproduces a certain reality of the environment”. “This reality is represented as objectively distinct; it has to do with the psychic” – as Freud had made clear.
Furthermore, “its activity repeats in lived experience the reality thus fixed on every occasion when certain experiences occur that would require a higher objectification of this reality”. The compulsion to repeat.
That is to say, the complex is dominated and “linked to a lived stage of objectification”; a “manifestation of objective lack in the face of a current situation”.
Weaning complex:
Lacan presents weaning as one of the subject’s traumatic events. Hence, the reproduction of a family scenario within the organisation—even if the signifier is not used there, as the subject carries their own narrative with them—could be experienced by the subject as the trauma of that weaning.
We would then have that, “the abandonment of the securities entailed by the family economy has the value of a repetition of weaning”, whilst the “return, even partial, to these securities, can give rise in the psyche to ruins bearing no relation whatsoever to the practical benefit of this return”. (34)
Thus, abandoning the positions familiar to the subject within the organisation—which would have allowed them to establish that psychic reality—could awaken this trauma within them. As Freud says, whose external reality is replaced by the psychic.
We would additionally have the Intrusion Complex and the Oedipus Complex:
Regarding jealousy, Lacan says it is the “archetype of Social Feelings”. Being within the realm of the familiar, this jealousy is then aroused in the subject “when they realise they have siblings”.
According to Lacan, “jealousy, at its core, does not represent a vital rivalry but a mental identification”. (35) A “you are that which you hate” (36), where the dimension of aggression comes into play, in relation to that mirror image. (37)
Aggressive tension, which, following Freud and bearing in mind the aforementioned reference to the family novel, is reduced when siblings realise that their parents’ love is equal for all. (38)
This also reawakens the old ambivalence of feelings—love-hate—towards the figure of authority, who represents both admiration and fear (39), who acts as an obstacle to the primary quest for satisfaction, and who has left a mark of unconscious prohibition. (40)
Mourning.
Given what has been mentioned so far and the ever-present consideration of the subjective, it will be understood that each individual experiences any event or circumstance in a completely singular way.
Hence, if the topic of grief has been raised, we consider it a reality which, from an organisational perspective, can be experienced by individuals.
One point of entry into the question of mourning could be through suffering. This allows us to situate it, following Jacques-Alain Miller, as “suffering to which the analyst must give voice in the analytical experience”. That is to say, one does not make “a case for suffering” (41), one does not question its authenticity; rather, one gives this suffering a place in the one-to-one setting—that is, the suffering that each person experiences from their own subjectivity.
What unfolds through the space given to the subject’s word within the analytical setting, in the one-to-one, is that “this suffering does not imply that the truth of pain is pain itself (42)”. That truth, as mentioned earlier, forms part of the subjectivation of the phenomena the subject experiences and the effects that language has left on each individual.
“Mourning is, as a general rule, the reaction to the loss of a loved one or an abstraction that takes their place, such as the homeland, freedom, an ideal, etc.” (43) As that which takes its place and an ideal, it can be taken as the ideal of what has already been achieved, which, at an organisational-occupational level, could be represented in what is assumed to be ‘already known’ or psychically inscribed as something of great value.
Mourning, on a subjective level, “is defined by a felt sorrow, a sorrow that implies a state of sadness which is theoretically described as ‘affect’, a word that in common parlance refers to emotion and feeling”. ‘Grief is part of the logic of feelings that crush the soul, cause the body to decline and affect social bonds, for in this state there is no spirit for socialising’. (44)
By way of summary.
The approach of this perspective, which takes subjectivity very seriously, implies that by mentioning elements such as defence, symptom, drive, desire, repetition compulsion, and jouissance, the aim is to provide insights that offer a glimpse of these other elements that escape the objective perspective.
What this means is that, whilst some elements can be generalised, it is only at the level of the subjective and the singular, in the one-to-one, that other factors of unconscious determinism can be found, which cause each subject to seek, in that external reality, a way to satisfy what is inscribed in their psychic reality.
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Bibliography.
(1) Jacques Lacan, «Presentation on Psychical Causality», in Écrits , London, Norton & Company, 2006.
(2) Jacques Lacan, Del discurso psicoanalítico, conferencia en Milán, 1972.
(3) Domenico Cosenza, Clínica del exceso, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2024.
(4) Jacques-Alain Miller, Del síntoma al fantasma. Y retorno, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2018.
(5) José María Álvarez, Estudios sobre la psicosis, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2014.
(6) Gustavo Dessal, en El retorno del péndulo, con Zygmunt Bauman, Madrid, FCE, 2014.
(7) Jacques Lacan, «Prefacio a una tesis», in Otros escritos, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2012.
(8) Jacques Lacan, The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book XVII, The other side of Psychoanalysis, London, Norton & Company, 2007.
(9) Jacques Lacan, «The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious», in Écrits , London, Norton & Company, 2006.
(10) Jacques Lacan, The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book VI, Desire and its Interpretation, Polity, UK, 2021.
(11) Sigmund Freud, «Jenseits des Lustprinzips», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(12) Sigmund Freud, «Jenseits des Lustprinzips», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(13) José María Álvarez, Estudios de psicología patológica, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2017.
(14) José María Álvarez, Principios de una psicoterapia de la psicosis, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2020. / Deutsche Version verfügbar ab 01.05.2026, Prinzipien einer Psychotherapie der Psychose, Mössingen, Artemisa Verlag OHG, 2026.
(15) José María Álvarez, Estudios de psicología patológica, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2017.
(16) Sigmund Freud, «Jenseits des Lustprinzips», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(17) José María Álvarez, Estudios de psicología patológica, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2017.
(18) Sigmund Freud, «Bemerkung über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band VII, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(19) Sigmund Freud, «Das Ich und das Es», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(20) Jacques-Alain Miller, Del síntoma al fantasma. Y retorno, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2018.
(21) Jean Claude Maleval, El autista y su voz, Barcelona, Gredos, 2011.
(22) Jacques Lacan, «On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis», in Écrits , London, Norton & Company, 2006.
(23) Jacques Lacan, The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book VI, Desire and its Interpretation, Polity, UK, 2021.
(24) Jacques Lacan, The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book XVII, The other side of Psychoanalysis, London, Norton & Company, 2007.
(25) José María Álvarez, Estudios sobre la psicosis, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2014.
(26) Sigmund Freud, «Das Unbewußte», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band X, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(27) Domenico Cosenza, Clínica del exceso, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2024.
(28) José María Álvarez, Estudios de psicología patológica, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2017.
(29) Sigmund Freud, «Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band V, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(30) Jacques Lacan, The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book V, Formations of the Unconscious, Polity, UK, 2017.
(31) Sigmund Freud, «Einige Charaktertypen aus der psychoanalytischen Arbeit», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band X, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(32) Sigmund Freud, «Das Unbewußte», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band X, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(33) Jacques Lacan, La familia, Buenos Aires, Homo Sapiens, 1977.
(34) Ibid.
(35) Ibid.
(36) Jacques Lacan, The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book V, Formations of the Unconscious, Polity, UK, 2017.
(37) Jacques Lacan, The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book X, Anxiety, Polity, UK, 2014.
(38) Sigmund Freud, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(39) Ibid.
(40) Sigmund Freud, «Das Ich und das Es», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band XIII, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(41) Jacques-Alain Miller, Del síntoma al fantasma. Y retorno, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2018.
(42) Ibid.
(43) Sigmund Freud, «Trauer und Melancholie», in Sigmund Freud. Gesammelte Werke, Band X, London, Imago Publishing, 1942.
(44) Héctor Gallo, Suicidio, salud mental y deseo de vivir. Una clínica psicoanalítica posible, Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2025.
