The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 42, #3 Fall 2004

A Career in Corporate Psychoanalysis
by Kerry J. Sulkowicz, MD

I was delighted when Herb Stein asked me to write a brief piece for the PANY Bulletin, describing my career transformation from full-time clinician to nearly full-time "applied psychoanalyst," in part because this gives me a chance to explain my relative disappearance from the life of the Institute. As with some of the best things in life, my consulting career began by accident, although as analysts we know that there are often deeper determinants to even the most fortuitous events.
I have become, over the past nine years, an advisor to CEO's on psychological aspects of running their companies. I had a longstanding interest in the dynamics of groups-predating my interest in the dynamics of our own Institute and other psychoanalytic groups-and had been struck by how analysts were, in general, remarkably uninformed when it came to thinking analytically beyond the clinical dyad.
Freud wrote a few papers, including "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" and "Civilization and Its Discontents", in which he tried to extrapolate some of his ideas about individual psychology to the psychodynamics of groups. Groundbreaking as they were, it wasn't until the publication of W.R. Bion's monograph, "The Experience of Groups" that a few analysts started to understand group dynamics in a truly constructive and original way. But the tiny field of group dynamics has remained largely separate from mainstream analysis, as evidenced by the fact that few institutes teach anything about it. It's an even smaller group that tries to apply some of these ideas to corporate life.
At the end of a cocktail party conversation with the father of one of my daughters' classmates, I was invited to meet with him and his partners, who had founded an Internet marketing company in the early-90's. They wanted someone to speak with them about tensions in their management team, and difficulties they were having making the transition from being an entrepreneurial start-up to managing a more established corporation. What began as a lunch-hour diversion led, ultimately, to my career change, with lots of bumps and unplanned detours along the way.
I started doing more and more consulting work, struggling to juggle the demands of going to various corporate sites while seeing a full practice and becoming a training analyst. Partly because of my involvement with the public relations activities of the American Psychoanalytic Association, I found myself speaking to the press frequently on topics related to the psychology of business. I started writing papers, academic at first, including one on "Psychoanalysis and the New Economy" and another on "Stalking and Voyeurism on the Internet." Eventually, I began to write for the popular press, and for the past year and a half, have written a monthly Q & A column called "The Corporate Shrink" for a business magazine, Fast Company. Earlier this year, I published a piece in the Harvard Business Review, on CEO's and their confidants (based on my observations of some of the difficult transference relationships that develop at the top of organizations).
About five years ago, I incorporated my consulting practice as The Boswell Group LLC, named after our dog, Boswell. Currently, there are three other Principals in the group (not counting the dog): Kenneth Eisold, PhD (the current President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and an analyst at the William Alanson White Institute), Erik Gann, MD (a former member of our Institute faculty and Past President of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society), and Kenneth Settel, MD (an analyst on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Chair of the American's Committee on Corporate and Organizational Consulting).
One detour that was a great learning experience occurred about four years ago, before my partners joined me in the Boswell Group. Through a series of connections, I met the founders of a rapidly growing management consulting firm, Katzenbach Partners LLC, that had been launched in 1998. They had all worked at McKinsey & Co., and had gone out on their own. After doing some work with a few of their senior clients (all Fortune 500 companies), they essentially "bought" the Boswell Group, and I became a Principal at their firm. It was like a crash course in business. But about a year into it, I realized that I missed my independence, and restructured my relationship with Katzenbach so that they became my client, I became the "Senior Fellow" of their firm, and I returned to working as the Boswell Group. I introduced one of the founders of Katzenbach Partners, Niko Canner, to the American, and his pro bono consultation led to the current Task Force on Reorganization of the Association.
I've been very fortunate. While there are legions of organizational consultants, there are very few who bring a clinical psychoanalytic perspective to bear on their work. My clinical background informs everything I do inside corporations, where I now work primarily with large public companies, several family businesses, and a few hedge funds. Every day seems to bring something new. About a third of my time now is devoted to helping boards of directors assess prospective CEO's for their companies, and to help in the process of leadership transition. I also serve as a sounding board to CEO's and their senior management teams, meeting with them regularly to talk about people, executive team dynamics, and corporate culture. And with hedge funds and private equity firms, I address some of the problematic dynamics that occur among the partners, as well as help them assess the stability of management teams in companies under consideration for investment.
Many of these executives would never seek traditional psychoanalytic treatment, for reasons of resistance and stigma as well as because of their highly irregular schedules. The isolation, loneliness and continuous uncertainty that comes with running large organizations makes it even more important for them to have someone with whom they can process the inevitable interpersonal and group dynamic challenges they encounter. While what I offer is not treatment, it bears some similarities to an analytically-informed, supportive psychotherapy, with frequently shifting boundaries in a decidedly two-person system.
I still have a small private practice, but it is limited to about a day each week, so I'm no longer doing any analysis. But one of the things that has been interesting to me as I've reflected on my adventure is that my identity as an analyst has never been stronger. Not only does psychoanalysis provide the underpinnings of my work, it has also fundamentally changed some of my views on psychoanalysis as a profession. Clinical psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy will always remain at the heart of what it means to be an analyst, but I've come to believe that the future of analysis may become more and more dependent on applied analysis, building two-way bridges to other disciplines including business, law, education, the arts, and-perhaps most important-academia. I'd love to see at least a few analytic institutes of the future transform from being primarily focused on training mental health professionals to become larger centers of analytic excellence, where clinical training is viewed as on par with analytic education for architects, writers, lawyers and judges, business executives, school teachers, and anyone else who might benefit from bringing this invaluable perspective back to their primary work.
My involvement at the Institute has gone from being a member of virtually every committee to doing virtually nothing. I am, however, teaching two of the first-year candidates, who are also fourth-year psychiatry residents at NYU, in an elective in Organizational Psychoanalysis. I remain very involved at the American Psychoanalytic Association, where I'm in my fourth year as chair of the Committee on Public Information, and have just begun my second tour as a member of the Steering Committee (first during Newell Fischer's Presidency and now under Jon Meyer). My more flexible schedule and my interest in organizations has also led me to join two non-profit boards: the Lucy Daniels Foundation, which promotes the intersection between psychoanalysis and creativity, and the Appleseed Foundation, which seeks to improve social justice through changes in the legal system. I also consult on a pro bono basis to the office of the President of New York University, John Sexton.
In responding to Herb's request, I've given a condensed update on my unusual analytic career. I appreciate his interest in keeping me connected with my friends at PANY, and I hope to have the chance to catch up with many of you in the near future.