World-renowned management guru and expert in corporate neurosis Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries puts organizations on the couch. By combining the dismal science of management and the impossible profession of psychoanalysis, Kets de Vries presents eclectic advice on how things really work in organizations.

These brief and insightful essays not only decipher problems that are common in organizational life, but they also shed light on some of the underlying dimensions that often go unnoticed.

Kets de Vries covers everything from leadership and entrepreneurship to downsizing and managing acquisitions, using contemporary examples like Robert Maxwell, Jack Welch, Tom Peters, Robert Coles, and John Gardner.

Managers are confronted with many difficult demands which are still unknown to them. Gaining a better knowledge for unconscious ways of human behavior and their motivations is very important. This book introduces research work to European readers by selected contributions from leading psychoanalytically oriented management theorists and clinicians. The authors deal with different topics such as leadership, corporate culture, family business, organizational stress, career dynamics and so on. All of them try to win an understanding and insight into conscious, unconscious, rational and irrational behavior. The purpose of this book is fulfilled if this knowledge can be practiced in order to achieve improvements for the cooperation between people in general.

Is your organization obsessive-compulsive or passive-aggressive? Corporate neurosis expert Manfred Kets de Vries analyzes dysfunctional organizational behavior in terms of accepted psychoanalytic types and arrives at some genuine insights into why some companies are healthier than others.