“A thoroughly researched and fully detailed effort to apply psychoanalytic understanding to the work of individuals and organizations....This is a valuable book. ”

—Contemporary Psychology


“This thorough book is a definitive summary of psychoanalytic theories relevant to management and organizational consulting.... The Psychodynamics of Work and Organizations should be of use to psychoanalysts interested in management consulting as well as organizational consultants interested in psychoanalysis.”

—American Journal of Psychotherapy


“Graduate students will find it accessible and not excessively heavy-handed with psychoanalytic jargon.”

—Administrative Science Quarterly


“Czander understands, as few psychologists do, that the modern organization rivals, even surpasses, the family as the primary source of deep psychological meaning in our lives.”

—Peter M. Newton, Ph.D., The Wright Institute


“This is a superb and extremely timely text. It is well written and represents an original contribution to the literature on the application of psychodynamic thinking to organizational life and work and to understanding the complexity of organizational assessment and consultation. It will be indispensable to organizational consultants, students of psychoanalytic theory and to managers who 'think analytically.' The first part of this book presents well-balanced, comprehensive contemporary integrations of Freud's classical psychoanalytic theory, object relations theories and self psychology theory. A major contribution to our dynamic understanding of work and organizational life. This book is unique in that it describes in some detail the way in which one thinks about an organizational psychoanalytically—that is, how one tries to understand the organization in terms of themes and metaphors, what one looks for overtly and covertly, how one attempts to interpret these data and how one translates these understandings into interpretive interventions. In addition to an excellent summary of nine models of organizational consultation, Dr. Czander presents for the first time a detailed analysis and description of psychoanalytic consulting and the guideposts which define this model. One of the most creative features of this book is the application of this psychoanalytic model to organizational problems in the areas of task analysis, the exercise of authority, the taking of a role, inter-organizational subsystem relations, and the tensions between autonomous and dependent structures. Consultations to these problem areas are richly and clearly illustrated with selective case material. This is clearly one of the most sophisticated texts in this area and belongs in the same league with the work of deBoard, Kets de Vries, Hirschhorn, and Rice.”

—Solomon Cytrynbaum, Ph.D., Northwestern University


“A comprehensive fundamental volume which gives structure to the whole field of consultation....Dr. Czander introduced the various important branches of psychoanalytic thinking, criticizes them, and then uses them as a basis for evaluating other kinds of consultation....This is a basic volume that will be a foundation for the profession for many years to come. The book is straightforward....The work is well researched and well referenced and covers the whole field....I wish I had written it myself....”

—Harry Levinson, Ph.D., The Levinson Institute


“This is one of the better books on organizational psychodynamics from the perspective of someone interested in learning about this approach to the practice of organizational consultation. Graduate students will find it accessible and not excessively heavy-handed with psychoanalytic jargon.”

—Michael A. Diamond in Administrative Science Quarterly March 1996


“This thorough book is a definitive summary of psychoanalytic theories relevant to management and organizational consulting.... The Psychodynamics of Work and Organizations should be of use to psychoanalysts interested in management consulting as well as organizational consultants interested in psychoanalysis.”

—T.L. Brink, PhD, American Journal of Psychotherapy